The Good Samaritan part 2

Please take a look at my previous (short) blog post before reading this. Huge thanks to Norman Lowe for sending the photo of a Moore & Co bowl below.  It has the well known 'Sporting' transfers, which you can see examples of on plaques on the Landscapes page.  But more excitingly, perhaps, it also has an image of the Good Samaritan.

It looks incongruous amongst the hunting transfers, and without its title must have confused a few people.  Has one of the hunters fallen off his horse? 

So how does it compare with the plaque? Click on the details below to enlarge, and to move between them.

The most obvious difference is that one is the mirror image of the other.  Notice also that the image is too big for my small circular plaque, so that the tree trunk that should appear on the right is missing. 

Is the c1830's plaque Moore & Co?  It doesn't seem likely. The image appears so rarely we have to assume it didn't take off commercially.  So there seems little reason for one pottery to want two transfer plates.  Who made the plaque?  Your guess is as good as mine.

P.S.

In my original post I wrote... 'the image would appear in reverse upon the copper transfer plate.  My guess is that the engraver had an early plaque or similar in front of him and painstakingly copied the image onto the copper plate. He couldn't copy the title in the same way, because when printed it would appear in reverse.'  

Thinking about it, this is wrong! The image appeared exactly the way on the copper transfer plate as it would the object. It was first printed onto tissue paper, on which it appeared in reverse. Then the image on the tissue paper was transferred onto the object, the right way around again.

So why would we end up with a reverse image on pottery?  Perhaps all the engraver had to work from was an imprint on paper direct from the copper plate.

P.P.S.

Norman has sent some further photos of the bowl.  He writes: I’m never sure about dates on lustre pieces without primary evidence. I imagine that bowls like this were produced over a long period and while it might be 1850s it could just as easily be earlier, including the 1830s. The transfers are clear and seem to be from dies that have been relatively un-worn. And Baker indicates 1830-1850 for this transfer.

I guess that means that it is just possible that bowl pre-dates the plaque.