Friday Show & Tell: Travel Souvenir Collections 2 – Plates

Show and Tell Friday is hosted by Kelli at There is No Place Like Home

Blue and White Transferware Plates As Souvenirs

Souvenir plates are available at most places where there are tourists. Most will be designs in multiple colors, but for many sites the collector of blue and white transfer wares will find a plate in those favored colors as a remembrance of travel.

I have a small collection of blue and white plates from places I have visited in various U.S. states or cities, as well as places in Europe, England principally. I only want the plate if I actually visited the specific state, country, city, or location depicted on the plate.

I feel it is most effective to group all the souvenir plates together as a theme display. The majority of the collection is displayed on my guest bathroom walls. Since I was using the nails from a previously hung wall group, the plates are arrayed in four rows of three plates each.

The first group on the left, next to the bathtub, shows New Orleans, LA, The Wayside Inn, MA, and the Incline Railway, Chattanooga, TN.

The middle group has a colorful Portuguese plate in the center.* Above it is Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, England, and below is a plate for Washington, DC.

The third group has Windsor Castle, England, F.D. Roosevelt’s home in upstate NY, and the Massachusetts State House.

The final group of three has Venice, Italy, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Rome, Italy.

The plate depicting the Old Wayside Inn in Sudbury, MA was presented to me at a banquet, the evening following our visit to the Old Wayside Inn. We had a delicious meal in the historic inn. While visiting the gift shop someone overheard me remark on my love of blue and white dishes. When I opened the gift presented to me as host the next evening, there was the lovely plate, a reminder of a delightful stop on our tour.

Here is the book Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry W. Longfellow which I bought there at the gift shop. Also, the brochure.

My other Massachusetts plates include Cape Cod, and the State House shown in the following photo.

When I was growing up my family attended camp meeting in upstate New York, quite near to Hyde Park, home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was very interesting to tour the special presidential home and to see mementos of his life there.

My visits to the nation’s capital always fills me with a sense or awe at the grand buildings. This souvenir plate of Washington, DC depicts many important landmarks.

A visit to the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee included tours to Civil War sites. The site of the Battle on Lookout Mountain was fascinating. Our tour group took a ride up the face of the mountain in a specially built rail car with the seats built out from the sloping floor.
A vivid reminder of the ride up the Incline Railroad to the top of Lookout Mountain while viewing the city of Chattanooga below, was my concern over what it would be like to ride down the amazingly steep incline.

I never got to find out because when we arrived at the mountain top, our bus was waiting for us, having taken the circuitous route round and round to the top. So after visiting Civil War sites and admiring the large stately homes, we boarded the bus for the trip down. I actually found the plate a little over a month later when shopping in an antique mall in central Massachusetts. I could hardly believe my eyes and snapped it up for the collection.

A few plates are not hung. The Washington, DC plate is a Capsco Product from Capitol Souvenir Co..
Another is from an important state series by Vernon Kilns, near Los Angeles, CA and
represents California.

Two of my most beautiful plates represent places I visited in England. The first is Anne Hathaway’s Cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon. After spending the day seeing the sights in and around Stratford, that evening we enjoyed a sprightly rendition of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Note the beautiful tree foilage around this plate.

As an English major in college I had studied the work of Sir Philip Sidney and was glad to see his home, Penshurst Place. When I visited there as a graduate student, the guide said that scenes for the movie "Anne of a Thousand Days" had been filmed there shortly before.

The view of Windsor Castle on this next plate is dated 1791.

This design of the plate below is from the Spode Blue Room Collection. There the Spode company maintains an archive of pieces from their distinguished history as a china manufacturer. The 1811 artwork on the plate depicts the city of Rome, Italy.


On September 21, 2008 I found another plate with a historical engraving. This one depicts Venice, Italy. The manufacturer of this plate is another English firm, Ridgway.

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*The Portuguese plate is in accent colors used in the bathroom ...

The shower curtain…

The sink accessories – tissue box, handpainted vases…

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To see more personal treasures, visit Kelli for a list of participating posts.