Description
Fine blue and white pottery platter decorated with an underglaze print of THE PRINTING HOUSE AND THEATRE from the Oxford Views series produced by J and W Ridgway Pottery Staffordshire in the early 19th century.
The back of the platter carries the Ridgway mark.
The Printing House, now known as the Clarendon Building, the Sheldonian Theatre to the right, and next to it, the Ashmolean Museum, now the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, the city of dreaming spires. ( In his poem ‘Thyrsis’ the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold called Oxford ‘the city of dreaming spires’ after the stunning architecture of the university and other buildings).