Description:

An earthenware plate with a central design printed in green in the Rail Way pattern framed with what is known as the Fabric Border printed in pink. The center scene shows an early train about to pass under an Arabic style arch with chimneys. The surrounding landscape is rural with a man and boy outside a nearby house, watching the train go by. Joseph-Jean in "Railroad Transfers: Enoch Wood & the Liverpool & Manchester Railway", TCC Bulletin (Vol. IX, No. 1) Spring 2008, pp. 8-9,  illustrates the pattern and source prints to support his contention that the center design for this pattern is based on images of the famed Moorish Arch, at Edge Hill in Liverpool, and the trains that ran on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830 - but set in an imaginary rural landscape to make the pattern more pleasing to the sensibilities of the time. Wood used this same central pattern with at least two other border patterns (see below).  Petra Williams identified what she called Wood's "Interchanging Border Phenomenon". She notes that this firm often interchanged certain center patterns and borders. Other examples of the use of interchanging borders are Fisherman, Festoon Border, and Suspension Bridges.