Description:

An ironstone octagonal platter printed in green in the Sydenham pattern. Clementson produced an entire series of patterns on dinner ware all with the same Sydenham name.  While exceptions can be found, each form in the dinner service was usually printed with a different scene, each showing a statue and architectural details to the right with a lake behind a terrace and distant castles and mountains to the left. Common to all patterns is the border with cartouches flanked by long, foliate scrolls.  Each reserve contains an image of a statue and a large, dark handled urn at the right. A lake, castle and mountains are found in the left background. Sydenham has been found in blue, brown, mulberry, purple, and green.

While Sydenham is now more or less incorporated into the city of London, in the first part of the 1800s it was rural. In 1852, that changed when the directors of the Railway moved the Crystal Palace, originally built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, to Sydenham, putting it in its own setting, complete with pleasure gardens and pools.

Much of the Clementson production, including this pattern, was shipped to the United States and Canada. Examples of this series of patterns have recently been found in archaeological digs.