Copeland Late Spode "Lotus" Dinner Plate

I found this plate for $1.00 and thought it was just so beautiful! I contacted an archivist at Stoke-on-Trent's city archives to help me identify this plate, and he was so incredibly helpful. He wrote:

As you will have found out the diamond registration mark encodes the date of registration. The letters that are visible indicate that the design was registered on 20 November in the period 1842-67. Fortunately the authoritative book by Robert Copeland 'Spode and Copeland Marks and other relevant intelligence' (ISBN 0 289 80172 9) contains a table of the designs that the firm registered. From this I discovered that the date was 20 November 1850 and the design was called Lotus.

Plain printed patterns (I.e. there is no decoration other than the print) were not recorded in the pattern books, as the copper plate from which the transfer was created was the original and complete record. However the Lotus pattern is recorded in the pattern books as pattern 8627. I looked at this design and it shows the stems of the central design and the borders of the border flowers outlined in gold. Its position in the date sequence means that this was probably recorded at the same time as the registration and that both a plain and a gilded version were in production.

The 'Copeland Late Spode' mark was in use between 1847 and 1890 so is no help in arriving at a precise date of manufacture. The company did start marking its ware with an impressed mark in 1870 to show the date and month of manufacture. Printed patterns could be in production for long periods, and some of Spode and Copeland's most popular patterns were in continuous production for over 150 years. So there is no way to be more precise than that your plate was most likely produced between 1850 and 1870.

I love my plate and I hope you do, too!

~Laura