Pilgrim Couple - John and Priscilla Alden

Absolutely stunning example  of custom items exported to the American Market. This plate depicts John Alden and Priscilla Mullins who is known to literary history as the unrequited love of the newly widowed Captain Miles Standish, the colony's military advisor, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. According to the poem, Standish asked his good friend John Alden to propose to Priscilla on his behalf, only to have Priscilla ask, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

 It is framed by an elaborate border of fruits and flowers.

VERY Hard to find!

Condition:  small chip on back rim (not visible from the top / front and crazing

Measures: 10" diameter

Elaborated R & M Staffordshire England 

Rowland & Marsellus Company is part of a mark that appears on historical Staffordshire dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rowland & Marsellus is the mark used by an American importing company in New York City. The company worked from 1893 to about 1937. Some of the pieces may have been made by the British Anchor Pottery Co. of Longton, England, for export to a New York firm. Many American views were made. Of special interest to collectors are the plates with rolled edges, usually blue and white. The rolled edge plate has a central design showing a building or scene, and several other related scenes in cartouches on the rolled-over edge of the plate. Most were souvenir plates for cities in the United States. 

To learn more about English transferware and see it in many practical and decorative uses please visit me at one of the places below:

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Featured on Etsy November 2012:

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2012/collecting-english-transferware-one-womans-story/