Design for a Plate

This design sheet from the Noritake porcelain company documents decorative patterns for hand-painted tableware. The page combines practical inventory notations with a finished example: a plate border rendered in gouache featuring pink peonies, yellow primroses, and blue grapes arranged on a turquoise ground that fades to pale yellow. Noritake, founded in Japan in 1876, established operations in New York to serve the American market with affordable decorated ceramics. Such design sheets guided factory artisans in producing consistent patterns across production runs, balancing artistic rendering with commercial repeatability. The numbered catalog entries and sketched vessel forms at the top indicate the systematic approach to industrial design during the Gilded Age.