Dinner plate

Henry van de Velde was one of the leading designers of the Art Nouveau movement. It is noteworthy that he designed this plate, part of a larger dinner service, for the German Meissen firm, an instance of how major porcelain firms looked to international style makers to help them develop modern tableware lines. For the service, van de Velde employed the more linear aspect of Art Nouveau, as opposed to the naturalistic one. Purely dynamic, the design has geometric elements that were characteristic of German modernism as developed by the Wiener Werkstätte. The decoration is reinforced by the molded curves of the plate.