Helen Miles - Wedgwood - Earthenware plate - May tile - 1882

Superb earthenware plate produced in 1882 by the Wedgwood factory, founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood. The factory commissioned Helen Miles, an illustrator, to create different tiles for each month of the year. Helen Miles was a rarity in Victorian England. Educated in South Kensington, she was a professional woman, an illustrator whose work was widely exhibited. She created postcards and greeting cards, illuminated Bibles, storybooks and coloring books for children. Her work appeared in periodicals such as Once A Week, a magazine devoted to contemporary artists. His work had a charming simplicity that lent itself to a variety of media, including print and pottery. The Old English series, or Months as it was sometimes called, was created for tiles, but like the Shakespeare pattern, it was soon adapted to plates as well. The plates used established transfer border patterns for their base, and shapes like the open-edged Key pattern of Wedgwood majolica as a backdrop for its designs. Tile illustrations were sometimes surrounded by the Bellflower pattern with a one-inch border for an 8-inch tile or superimposed in the round central area of majolica plates with their original square border intact. Some designs were monochrome, but many were hand-colored. Most tiles were produced in 6-inch format. On the reverse, a number of markings (Wedgwood, flower, letter code, etc.) date the plate precisely to 1882 (letter code GIK, K corresponding to 1882). This plate has the particularity of having a border that is not referenced anywhere and could therefore constitute a trial.