Clare Leighton Plate

A plate designed by Clare Leighton in 1952. Her book Four Hedges in back in print in a beautifully produced edition using the illustration on the front that we have always used to accompany Mariana. Clare Leighton's work should be much better known: it is a pity that most people only know her as the sister of Roland Leighton, immortalised in Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. This plate, which was designed in America (where Clare Leighton went to live in 1939), was manufactured by Wedgwood and is for sale here for £100. Apparently the organisation Support Historic New England has a set of all twelve plates. (Someone should write to them about supporting Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who deserves far more attention than she gets in America, or even New England, well I'm afraid she gets hardly any. A mystery: The Home-Maker is one of the great books of the twentieth century.)