Having perfected the technique of printing detailed scenes onto ceramics, potteries in England’s industrial heartland created products for an expanding consumer base in the United States. Appealing to American interests, they depicted patriotic landscapes and commemorated newsworthy tragedies like the 1835 Great Fire of New York City. The First Amendment plate memorializing newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–37) championed the Abolitionist cause for which he was killed. British artist Paul Scott harnesses this practice to address contemporary justice issues in North America, making sophisticated alterations to historical plates and their designs that comment on climate change, immigration, and the impact of natural resource extraction on Indigenous communities. Illustrated below, the reverse of his plate “Souvenir of Shiprock” bears a profusion of additional marks that document Scott’s inspiration and details of the plate’s production

Paul Scott, Souvenir of Shiprock (detail), 2020, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Alison and Jeffrey Edelstein and CeCe and Bill Feiler through the 2022 Decorative Arts and Design Acquisition Committee (DA²), © Paul Scott, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA