Plate

The presented plate is the oldest vessel in the Szczecin Museum with lead-tin glaze, classified as white ceramics of the Stettiner Ware type. Like all flatware from this group, the plate is glazed only on the face. It was made at the beginning of the 18th century, as the date placed on it indicates. Then, Pomeranian master potters were learning the technology of production and the way of using complicated and expensive lead-tin glaze, probably that is why the glaze is not of the best quality, not very shiny and ‘grey’. Maiolica and semi-maiolica faience came to Northern Europe from the south of the continent in the 16th century. In the 17th century, porcelain from China conquered European markets. It intensified the fashion for white-glazed dishes. From the Netherlands, Flanders and Germany, these trends reached West Pomerania, where numerous Dutch settlers in the 18th century expected such wares as they liked and were accustomed to from the local potters. The presented plate was undoubtedly made to order. It depicts two men and a woman dressed, by 18th century standards, in highly incomplete attire. There is also a dog painted, which has an ambivalent symbolic meaning, signifying impurity and corruption rather than fidelity and friendship. The use of yellow paint indicates the association of woman and dog with betrayal and shamelessness. The broad stroke bears the inscription ‘Gier stös ein den ander tobt’ [Lust Touches One After (with) the Other with a Bang (Madness)’, Żądza dotyka jednego po (z) drugim z hukiem (szaleństwem), Polish transl. by Bogdana Kozińska]. A plate with such a situational scene and a very telling inscription is probably a joke, an anecdote or perhaps a warning in an unusual form.

Iwona Karwowska