ARTWORK HISTORY:
Our family is very much into "the Arts" in all it's forms, from music to art to chinaware and even classic old (quality) technology!
Our art collecting focus has always been landscapes, both Australian and New Zealand, and this included not only paintings but special limited releases originally created by well known landscape artists, such as Chris Huber.
This display plate needs a new home as we are now focusing on oil artworks and our display plates must leave the house! Our beautiful set of Wedgwood display plates left home (boo hoo!) but now we have "other" display plates such as this one to find a new owner for, a very lonely orphan plate sitting in the display cabinet.
This plate is not all about being a Limited Edition, for us it was all about the memories invoked by the scenes the artist painted and for those who can remember, this one scene would be remembered well - marbles!
Even though I grew up in NZ, we played marbles and in fact I would believe most kids across NZ and Australia did in those days (1940's ~ 1960's) Boys would carry around a small cloth bag with a drawstring, inside were their treasured marbles which were either purchased but also traded or swapped amongst boys.
In this artwork, D'Arcy Doyle has bought those memories back to life, the dusty country street and a group of kids (of all ages) playing "marbles" - looking at this painting brings memories of those days flooding back, remember the other games such as Conkers, Hopscotch and "elastics" although that was more often played by girls.
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.
Let's get down to the basic description of this display plate ...
THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE (USA) - Display Plate
Series: BYGONE TRADES
Plate title: The Big Ring
Artist: D'Arcy Doyle
Of course this is not an original artwork and it is confirmed as being transferware
Base material: Japanese bright White porcelain blank but who or where the decoration was applied is unknown.
Plate identification (hand written metallic Gold ink): 278-B
Bradex Registration number: 03-B10-3.3
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 ... for example, 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 - those easy, carefree days when kids used to make their own entertainment in real life, not in the artificial world of a phone screen.
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
