Flat Dish - Virginia State Arms c. 1936

This flat dish with the Virginia State Arms by Helmut Hiatt features delicate line work and a restrained palette. The image is transferred onto the surface of the plate, it would be interesting to know exactly how that was done. Imagine Hiatt, carefully applying the image, adjusting, refining. It makes me think about the tradition of transferware and the way images get disseminated. I'm wondering what he thought about while he was doing this; was he thinking about Virginia, about its history, or about the people who would use this dish? The image itself is fascinating, this classical figure standing over a defeated foe, a really weird, theatrical scene. It makes me want to know more. The history of painting is full of artists borrowing, sampling, and riffing off each other's ideas. This dish reminds me of a conversation between different times, different places, different ways of making. It invites us to reflect on how images carry meaning and how they can be reinterpreted across generations.