Plate 1815 - 1834

Curator: Oh, look! What first grabs you about this plate, the "Plate" as it's known, produced between 1815 and 1834 by James and Ralph Clews. You can find it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: Well, before I knew anything about it, honestly, it hit me with a wave of historical blues...literally. The monochrome gives it this antique gravity. Is that supposed to be the White House in the center, framed by those almost cartoonish figures? Curator: Indeed. It seems to be a visual narrative attempting to synthesize ideas about the burgeoning American republic. It merges history with a clear sense of national genre-painting, wouldn’t you say? Editor: I'm picking up the narrative alright, though something feels...off. It’s charming but feels a little didactic to me. Does this almost naive Realism actually conceal something deeper in plain sight, perhaps irony about power, about nationhood itself? The women almost look forced on there like figures of propaganda instead of anything sincere. Curator: An intriguing possibility! Look at the names of the states around the rim. States that mattered. What might be more fascinating is the almost neoclassical interpretation of history—of those women you described with so much energy. Note, the inclusion of flowers and fruits gives us even more insight, it’s a visualization of perceived American virtues through agriculture and expansion! Editor: Maybe, I don't know, for me though those borders start to read like restrictions instead, little things that contain grand hopes in reality! A plate that ends up being so heavy it can’t actually hold anything without breaking itself, you know? But the very design of such an object speaks volumes about what nationhood felt like, about hope in the midst of its own making and fragility at the same time, I am realizing, and its ceramic reality is one that continues today, a strange object we encounter face to face like we encounter America itself as it moves through its eras and anxieties and potentials... Curator: Exactly. So much of what the symbolic imagery suggests also hides—making the cultural memory both revealed and veiled in intriguing measure. Food for thought indeed. Editor: Well said, well, it’s made me hungry...for answers, I mean, haha.