in the curio cabinet: rarities

Royal Worcester Collectors' Centenary Edition 
Audubon's Birds of America (1930s)

American Redstart

Pigeon Hawk

 
These service plates were issued by Royal Worcester in the 1930s.  They seem to be very rare; other than this almost complete set, we know of only one partial set of eight. This set at one time was complete with 24 plates.  Three plates were broken, two of which were repaired (the Rice Bird and Black-throated Blue Warbler).  The third plate, which featured the White-throated Sparrow, appears to have been discarded.  Unlike many of our other series, these plates often present a single detail from the original art rather than attempting to capture the entire image.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Backside of Broad-winged Hawk

This set is described by Waldemar Fries in his book The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon's Birds of America (Chicago: American Library Association, 1973).  

In the mid-1930s the Royal Worcester Porcelain Company was commissioned to produce a set of twenty-four service plates, each bearing a subject selected from Audubon's Birds of America "in observance of the centenary of this great work," the 87 numbers of which had been issued as completed between 1826 and 1838. The idea for this "collector's set" of commemorative plates originated with the English publishing house of A. C. & H. W. Dickins. Each subject portrayed on the individual plates was painted by hand "within a border of two tones of celadon green enriched with gold, the Worcester factory having revived for this purpose the long disused process of `honey gilding,' in which the powdered gold is mixed with beeswax and honey." Only a small number of sets were produced, for each plate required 11 firings and took 30 days to complete. When the stipulated number of sets had been made, the Worcester factory destroyed the original design models to ensure that no more would be produced.

 Click on the thumbnails for larger photos of the remaining plates.

Audubon's Warbler	Barn Swallow	Black-throated Blue Warbler	Blue Jay
Broad-winged Hawk	Cardinal	Catbird	Chestnut-backed Titmouse
American Crow	Downy Woodpecker	American Goldfinch	Hermit Thrush
Louisiana Tanager	White-breasted Nuthatch	Le Petit Caporal	Orchard Oriole
Rice Bird	American Robin	Great American Shrike	Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

We are looking for more information on these plates.  If you know anything about these, we would appreciate hearing from you.

back to curio cabinet main page

Last updated 09.05.05