4 Desert Rose Plates

FOUR FRANCISCAN DESERT ROSE DINNER PLATES - EARLY GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. BROWN BACKSTAMP Offered here is a matched set of four Franciscan Desert Rose dinner plates in hand-decorated California earthenware, the best-selling pattern of American dinnerware ever produced. Each plate carries the pattern's molded and hand-painted border of open pink wild roses with dotted yellow centers, tight pink buds, glossy green leaves, and a continuous thorny branch that follows the molded scalloped rim. The painting on this group is generous and well saturated, with several fully opened roses on each plate and a deep olive-brown thorn vine wrapping the rim edge. All four are marked on the underside with the earlier brown Gladding, McBean & Co. dotted-oval backstamp rather than the later Interpace mark, placing them in the older California-made period of production. These plates coordinate with the Desert Rose cup and saucer sets, bowls, and serving pieces offered elsewhere in this sale, making this a practical lot for a bidder building out or completing a service. Excellent for holiday and everyday table use, china cabinet display, or wall hanging in a kitchen or breakfast room. Sold as a lot of four pieces. Description Four matching dinner plates in the Franciscan Desert Rose pattern, glazed earthenware, round with a molded scalloped and wavy rim edge Each plate measures approximately 10-1/2 inches in diameter per the tape-measure photograph; the tape was laid across the face of one plate with the hook set at the rim, and the opposite rim edge falls at roughly the 10-1/2 inch line. Decoration is the standard Desert Rose border treatment: multiple open five-petal pink roses with elongated yellow pollen centers dotted in dark brown, tight pink buds, broad green leaves in two tones, and a thorny olive-brown vine wrapping the entire rim; the relief molding under the glaze gives the leaves and branch a raised, hand-modeled feel Rim edges carry the characteristic olive to brown wash along the scalloped border Center wells are undecorated cream white with soft concentric shaping rings Undersides are fully glazed white with a recessed foot ring Backstamp, photographed close up, reads in a brown dotted oval: GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. across the top of the ring and MADE IN U.S.A. across the bottom, with a small and at upper right, and inside the oval the script Franciscan over EARTHENWARE. A single small letter, reading as R, sits directly beneath the oval, and below that is a hand-painted decorator number reading 168 Small round stilt or kiln-support points are visible on the glazed undersides; these are normal firing artifacts of the manufacturing process, not damage Attribution note Desert Rose was introduced in 1941 by Gladding, McBean & Co. of Los Angeles, California, and went on to become the single best-selling pattern of American dinnerware ever produced, with California manufacture continuing into the mid-1980s. Gladding, McBean was absorbed into the Interpace Corporation in the early 1960s, so backstamps that still carry the GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. company name in the ring, as these plates do, predate the INTERPACE ring marks and are generally considered the earlier and more collected strike. Later Wedgwood-era marks show England or Portugal rather than U.S.A. Replacements, Ltd. catalogs and the Gladding, McBean Franciscan archive both document this progression of marks and identify the raised-relief hand-painted rose border as the defining feature of the pattern. The hand-painted number below the oval is a decorator or line-worker number rather than a date code. The mark reading, era, pattern identification, and dimensions given here are offered as the consignor's photo-based opinion and are not guaranteed; parts of the mark are faintly struck and bidders should judge them from the photographs. Bid on the item as pictured. Condition Used vintage condition, sold as-is. All four plates were photographed as a stack, individually face up, in profile, and in close detail, including the underside and the backstamp. The glaze is bright and glossy overall, the painted decoration is strong with good color saturation, and no chips, cracks, or breaks were observed in the photographs. Expect light overall utensil scuffing and faint flatware scratching in the plate wells consistent with actual table use. Scattered dark specks, pinpoint iron flecks, small glaze bumps, and a few faint tan spots in the wells are visible on several plates and are typical of hand-decorated earthenware of this age. Noticeable variation in brushwork, leaf color, and rim wash tone from one plate to the next should be expected, as each was hand painted, and is not considered a flaw. The scalloped rim edges, the high points of the molded leaves and thorny branch, and the outer rim points are the areas most vulnerable to nicks and flakes on this pattern, and bidders should inspect those areas closely in the photographs. No repairs, fills, or overpaint