Plaque with poppies
Decorated by M. Louise McLaughlin American
Louise McLaughlin was a pioneering figure in the history of American ceramics. Like many women of her time, she began her artistic career as a china painter. One of her earliest innovations was her discover of the barbotine technique in the late 1870s and early 1880s. By the mid-1880s when the vogue for barbotine ware had waned, she turned back to china painting and other artistic endeavors. This plaque is rather unusual within McLaughlin’s oeuvre. In the china painting mode, it depicts a bunch of poppies in a naturalistic fashion, but almost as an oil painting, with the background fully covered in a deep yellowish gold and her signature on the front at the lower right. Even the molded rim has been painted a dark brown, almost as if it were meant to simulate a frame.
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