Ceramic Plate: Crayfish 1866 - 1875

Editor: Here we have Félix Henri Bracquemond's ceramic plate, "Crayfish." It's quite simple, yet the crayfish illustration is so detailed. How should we interpret this piece? Curator: Consider the plate as more than decorative. The crayfish, rendered with such precision, speaks to 19th-century scientific illustration and the burgeoning field of natural history. How might this object reflect power structures in scientific study, and the human desire to dominate the natural world? Editor: So, it's not *just* a pretty plate? Curator: Exactly! By placing a 'wild' creature onto a domestic object, Bracquemond subtly comments on the relationship between the domestic and the wild, control and freedom. Editor: That's a perspective I hadn't considered. It gives a new depth to something seemingly simple.