Plate (part of a set) 1759 - 1793

Curator: This object is a plate, part of a larger set, crafted between 1759 and 1793 by De Porceleyne Bijl. It resides here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: It feels so fragile! The delicate monochrome landscape seems almost dreamlike. Curator: Indeed. What we see here is an example of Dutch Delftware. It uses ceramic materials and ink to simulate the style we would normally find in drawings and paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Editor: I see immediately what you mean about that aesthetic borrowing. The landscape itself feels pregnant with symbolism. Two figures rest near what seems a fence, a shepherd guides livestock towards a town with prominent steeples in the distance... It all feels carefully arranged to signify something. Curator: And how does it speak to you? Editor: The plate is inscribed with the word "Meij" – May in old Dutch spelling– hinting perhaps at the spring season, renewal. The fence creates an enclosure or division. Does it denote social stratification, land ownership, or perhaps something more intimate? The resting figures might represent a temporary escape from labor or a romantic tryst within nature's confines. Curator: These porcelain objects served as important status symbols, reflecting societal shifts. Picturesque pastoral scenes reminded the rising urban merchant class of the disappearing rural lifestyle, which shaped their cultural identity through constructed representations. Editor: I hadn’t thought about its social role like that, more the nostalgia it conjures through a shared artistic vernacular. The depiction of landscape becomes not just scenery, but cultural shorthand. The fence can symbolize boundaries while the landscape allows for a reminder of a perhaps unattainable pastoral harmony. Curator: Exactly. It represents this complex interplay of desire, memory, and social status so prevalent in 18th-century Europe, now rendered into domestic art. Editor: Seeing the detail again after discussing... that initial fragility transforms into quiet strength. There is much embedded in what appears at first to be simple decoration.