A Renaissance Birth Plate

* I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mr. T. G. Ayers, Deputy Keeper, Department of Ceramics, Victoria and Albert Museum, who arranged for the preparation of the fine photograph used in Fig. 1, and to Mr. J. V. G. Mallet, Assistant Keeper of the same department, who very kindly answered my queries.

Abstract

The early Renaissance custom of presenting gifts on a painted wooden tray to the mother of a new-born child is familiar to historians and lovers of art. The trays, however, for all the freshness of their pictures and their aspiring classical themes, soon lost their vogue. With the expansion of the ceramics industry in the sixteenth century and the development of the historiated style of pottery a specially designed set of majolica ware was substituted for the wooden tray.¹ The fashion of giving birth-wares persisted until the eighteenth century.