HISTORY:
This plate is not really about the art but the nostalgic memories these images can bring to those who can remember ...
Gordon Hanley is a well known, accomplished Australian artist who bought to us many artworks relating to "the good old days" how things used to be.
Macquarie Heritage Australia looks to be the company that released this plate although I cannot find anything definitive about them. This and other Macquarie Heritage plates look incredibly similar to The Bradford Exchange which is an American company that began venturing into the world of collectable plates in the 1970's and in fact they are still in operation
The title of this artwork tells it all ... way back in the past, around the 1930's ~ 1960's, Arnott's biscuits were delivered to the stores (no giant supermarket chains back then) in square tin cans with a wide pop off lid in the top. Each tin held a particular flavour of biscuit such as Honey Snaps, Pink Vovo's, Butter Oakcakes, Golden Rough and Harvest Home biscuits. As luck would have it, sometimes the biscuits arrived broken during the Arnott's delivery van travels (Arnott's had their own delivery service using distinctive Red vans) and if you were hanging around outside one of the stores which was receiving a delivery, perhaps some of the biscuits were broken and you might even get one or two given to you. Yeah!
I don't think Arnott's makes a habit of offering broken biscuits these days and many of those wonderful flavours have disappeared but I do know that over in NZ there are biscuit makers (not Arnott's) that offer to supply broken biscuits even to this day.
Let's get down to the basic description of this display plate ...
MACQUARIE HERITAGE (AUSTRALIA) - Display Plate
Series: BYGONE ERA
Plate title: Any Broken Biscuits
Artist: Gordon Hanley
Of course this is not an original artwork and it is confirmed as being transferware
Base material: Original source of the bright White porcelain blank or who applied the decoration is unknown.
Plate identification (hand written metallic Gold ink): 163-B
Bradex Registration number: 03-M02-14.2
It should be noted that these Bradex codings were created by The Bradford Exchange and indicate the following: [country]-[maker]-[series]. [issue] however I have found very little useful information about the structure of these codings.
We believe that many, many thousands of these plates were produced, based on the plate number codes used on other people's plates we have viewed and the statement on the rear "Production will not exceed 45 firing days" - a LOT of plates can be produced over a 45 day period and the number/letter coding could conceivably be used for at least up to 7,000 plates (three digits plus a letter and we have seen plates with the letter G)
NO box or "Certificate Of Authenticity" is included, quite frankly we always thought the latter to be rather dubious ... we had a Fred McCubbin display plate with a Certificate, SIGNED by Fred McCubbin which is of course ludicrous as he passed away in 1917 and the plate was produced in 1993!
In summary, the "pedigree" of the plate was not of interest to us, it was all about the artwork and what it represented - all those "old" household names are plastered around the country store, names such as Bushells Blue Label, Peters Ice Cream, Cottees sparkling drinks and Persil washing products.
DIMENSIONS:
198mm (7.75") diameter
WEIGHT:
280g
Can be displayed by using the supplied stand display (simple Black plastic type) or wall hanging using the two holes in the rear of the plate
CONDITION:
USED
Clean
NO decoration discolouration
NO cracks
NO chips
NO crazing
NO scratching to the glaze
