The lovely blue and white dinner plate that Sarah Williams is drying was part of a matching set of china. Archeologists found pieces of several broken plates, cups, and saucers that had the same floral pattern printed on them. Several fragments had marks printed on the bottom that tell us which company made the dishes. The distinctive maker’s mark has a banner with the name "KENWOOD" inside it, over a globe and banner enclosing the name “ALFRED MEAKIN.” The word “ENGLAND” appears under the globe.

This mark dates the manufacture of these wares between 1891 and 1897, and Kenwood is the name of the floral pattern. Similar wares made by the Alfred Meakin company of Tunstall, England, were sold in mail-order catalogs (like the 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. catalog). These English-made decorated wares were moderately expensive. We can imagine that Sarah and her daughters spent a fair amount of time looking through the china sets illustrated in the catalog before deciding which one to buy. According to the catalog page shown above, Sarah chose the new color, "flown pearl" which was a dark blue.