Pattern name: Canadian Sports; John Marshall and Company; Borrowstounness, Scotland; earthenware; diameter: 19.1 cm.
CMC 980.111.256

Canada had a certain romantic cachet in the nineteenth century, when views of faraway lands appealed to the Victorian imagination. Earthenware dishes with Canadian scenes were produced in British potteries not only for buyers in what we now call Canada, but also for an even larger market in the United States. There is also evidence that they were sold as far away as Mexico and Portugal. Plates decorated with under-glaze transfer prints, like this example, married the work of artists and printmakers with that of the enormous British pottery industry. Canadian sports scenes were popular in the souvenir industry. The illustration on this plate, showing a little girl shovelling, first appeared on a series of Christmas cards published in Montreal in the 1880s. It was made by a Scottish potter, John Marshall and Company.