Covered Dish with Tray 1800 - 1900

This drawing of a covered dish with tray, made with pen and watercolor, has no artist name attached to it. The identity of the artist is not known and we can only imagine what type of career they had. Perhaps they worked for a ceramics factory in Europe, the home of luxury porcelain? Or were they employed in the design department of a silversmith? The drawing shows a classic neoclassical style, using simple symmetrical forms. It would have been made in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when elites in Europe and the US bought luxury goods to show off their wealth and taste. If the artist was employed to create designs like this, it tells us something about the art world at the time. They were not necessarily esteemed individual artists like we think of today. It is through understanding such institutional frameworks, which can be researched through archives, that we can begin to comprehend the social history of art.