Vegetable Dish

This pink and white transfer-printed earthenware vegetable dish made by the Staffordshire firm of William Adams & Sons features a view of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. A snow-capped Mount Washington in the Presidential Range looms above the other darkened peaks. During the nineteenth century the White Mountains were a popular vacation destination celebrated for their picturesque beauty. Adams based its view of the mountains on an 1827/28 oil sketch by American landscape painter Thomas Cole (1801–1848) titled "View of the White Mountains, New Hampshire," which was reproduced by Fenner, Sears & Co. as an engraving titled "White Mountains, New Hampshire" in John Howard Hinton’s "The History and Topography of the United States of North America" (London, 1830 and 1832). Adams varied Cole's composition by eliminating a tall tree to the right, making the roadway less definite, inserting two boys and a dog in the foreground, thinning the forests, and adding a flock of sheep in the middle distance. Adams included the view in a series of approximately fourteen American views based on Hinton's "Topography" with standard borders of flowers and fan-shaped medallions produced at the Greenfield Works in Tunstall, England for export to the United States. The American Wing's collection contains additional pieces by Adams, including others from the same series. It also contains original works by Cole. Refer to the Dictionary for a definition of the term "transfer printing" and for information about Adams.