Soup Plate

This blue and white transfer-printed earthenware soup plate made by the Staffordshire firm of Enoch Wood & Sons features a view of Albany, the capitol of New York. The same view also appears on a plate, 16.83.5, by Wood & Sons. Profiting from the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and its location at the junction of several railroads, Albany became an important nineteenth-century center of trade for western New York and a popular subject for transfer-printed export wares destined for American consumers. Wood & Sons' view of Albany, however, places greater emphasis on the natural beauty of the surrounding Hudson River landscape by adding bucolic notes of cows and rolling pastures in the foreground and distancing the viewer from the crowded city skyline. This was typical of nineteenth-century topographical views, which tended to romanticize the growth of towns and cities by masking their dirtiness and crowding.