Blue and white Ironstone platter

[cogar]

This is a beautiful old platter which I know nothing about ……. so any info would be appreciated: maker, age, value, anything. I am not even sure if it is English or American.

It is in perfect shape except for crazing on the bottom. There is an oblong impressed mark in the center of the bottom but which is un-readable because of the glazing. One can easily feel it but it is not easy to see or to photograph unless one holds it just right in natural (polarized) or Sunlight.

The platter is 16 ½” long by 11 ½” wide and is quite heavy.

Thanks much, Sam C

[KC]

You might want to try the trick of putting a thin piece of paper over the imprint and using the side of a pencil lead or crayon....lightly go across to see if the mark shows up.  It is worth a try.  Sometimes imprints not fully legible can be made "seeable" this way.

[cogar]

KC, the glazing is too thick so it is indented but smooth. I just remembered I had posted a picture of the mark on an English website ….. “Let’s Talk Pottery”, ….. and lucky for me I searched said and found those pictures, so here is what I posted about them, to wit:

I took 2 pictures, out on my covered porch, in natural light.

By angling the camera, the reflected light caused a shadow to appear of what looks like the base of the “mark” ….. which the mark itself appears to be “a tapered/flared vase with a round base”.

See 1st photo, mark is in center, with base of mark extending into the light area and top of mark (darker shadow) pointing to upper left corner. The light area of the photo is the “blue sky” reflection from underneath the porch roof behind me.   

In 2nd photo, mark is in center, but one can barely make it out.

Hope you can make out what I attempted to define.

Oh, and an added note of possible interest, being the designer/inventor that I am, I figured out from my above success that what one needs for such tasks, instead of or in addition to the “pencil/crayon trick, powder trick, etc.”, …. is a small battery powered flashlight/spotlight thingy which creates/generates a narrow beam of polarized light (like natural light). With polarized light, all the light rays or photons are moving parallel to each other so they produce a very distinct or precise shadow, just like Sunlight does. And you can see by the results in the following pictures which can not be seen in the above picture of the bottom of the platter.

Hope that helps for identification.

Sam C

[KC]

I see what you mean.  It is great that you got the picture that you did of that.  Impressive!

When I look at it....it appears different almost every time I look away and then back....due to the crazing pattern and indention!   I will definitely keep this one in my to-look-for pile!

[cogar]

Thanks JC. I just got lucky. I took the platter outside because I knew I couldn't use the flash. In trying to get the platter in just the right position so that I wasn't blocking the sunlight, .... bingo, .... there was the image. T'was then via my science 'edgumacation' I figured out what was happening because of the polarized light. And my digital camera then did its magic to record it.

I maybe should have repositioned it so that there was more 'blue sky' and then it would have been a super good picture. Maybe after all this 'global warming' eases up in a couple months I'll try it again.

Sam