Issue 12: the Famous Women Dinner Service
An artistic celebration of women’s success and notoriety, at a time when they were often anonymous.
Some 40 years before the feminist art movement emerged, a pair of artists were acknowledging gender politics by putting women’s achievement front and – quite literally – centre.
The Famous Women Dinner Service is a collection of hand-decorated Wedgwood plates featuring portraits of 48 significant women through the ages, from Sappho to Greta Garbo, plus one each of the artists.
The plates were created by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, a couple whose work both involved painting, textiles, and decoration of interiors and domestic items.
Based in Sussex, southeast England, the pair were also central figures in the Bloomsbury Group, a collection of artists and intellectuals, which included Bell's sister, the author Virginia Woolf.
The Famous Women Dinner Service is the result of a 1932 commission from art world luminary, Sir Kenneth Clark.
The commercially-made Wedgwood plates – known as ‘blanks’ – were individually painted in blue, brown, grey, and yellow glazes. The Service is divided into four groups, each of which features a common border pattern, but individually diverse examples of women of letters, queens, dancers and actresses, and ‘beauties’.
While not obviously linked, what all 48 women have in common is that they’re interesting and interested, important in their own ways and times, and they often led complex or unconventional lives.
The Service is a celebration of women’s success and notoriety, and a challenge to the way in which history was recorded at the time.
It chimes with the themes being expressed by Woolfe in her writing around the same period, about the anonymisation of women in the arts and history.
Women of letters
Left to right, top to bottom:
Jane Austen (1775-1817), novelist
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), poet
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), poet and novelist
George Eliot (1819-1880), novelist, Mary Anne Evans
Fanny Kemble (1809-1893), actress and writer
Murasaki (c978-1026), novelist and poet, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Dorothy Osborne (1627-1695), letter writer
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), poet
George Sand (1804-1876), novelist, Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant (née Dupin)
Sappho (c610-570), lyric poet
Madame de Staël (1766-1817), writer and salonnière, Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), writer
Queens
Left to right, top to bottom:
Catherine The Great (1729-1796), Russia
Christina of Sweden (1626-1689)
Cleopatra (c70-30 BC), Egypt
Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603), England
Eugenie (1826-1920), France
Jezebel (died c843 BC), Israel
Maria Antoinette (1755-1793), France
Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587), Scotland
Queen Mary (1867-1953), United Kingdom
The Queen of Sheba (c1000 BC), Arabia
Theodora (c500-548), Byzantium
Victoria (1819-1901), United Kingdom
Dancers and actresses
Left to right, top to bottom:
Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), actress
La Camargo (1710-1770), ballerina, Marie-Anne de Cupid de Camargo
Mrs Campbell (1865-1940), actress, Beatrice Stella Tanner
Eleanora Duse (1854-1924), actress
Greta Garbo (1905-1990), actress
Nell Gwynn (1650-1687), actress
Mrs Jordan (1762-1816), actress, Dorothea Jordan (née Bland)
Mrs Langtry (1853-1929), actress and producer, Emilie Charlotte Le Breton (Lillie Langtry)
Pavlova (1881-1931), ballerina, Anna Pavlova
Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), actress
Taglioni (1804-1884), ballerina, Marie Taglioni
Ellen Terry (1847-1928), actress, Alice Ellen Terry
Beauties
Left to right, top to bottom:
Beatrice (1266-1290), Florentine gentlewoman, Beatrice ‘Bice’ Portinari
Miss 1933 (1918-2002), Miss America, Marian Bergeron
Sarah Churchill (1660-1744), Duchess of Marlborough
Madame La Princesse de Metternich (1836-1921), Viennese socialite, Madame La Princesse Pauline Clémentine Marie Walburga von Metternich
Lola Montez (1821-1861), performer, Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert
Pocahontas (c1596-1617), Native American associated with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia
Rachel, biblical character
Madame Récamier (1777-1849), socialite and salonnière, Juliette Récamier
Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862), painter, poet, and model
Agnes Sorel (1422-1450), royal mistress
Helen of Troy (c5thC BC), daughter of Zeus
Simonetta Vespucci (1453-1476), Italian noblewoman
The set of plates is considered a milestone in the careers and output of Bell and Grant, as well as in the development of modern British art, and in its anticipation of feminist politics.
The Famous Women Dinner Service (estimated by Bonham’s auction house to have a retail value of £1,000,000) was acquired in 2018 by Charleston, a museum established in the former home of Bell and Grant. The plates are now on permanent public display for the first time since their creation around 90 years ago.
