‘The firm of Bell and Grant’ and the Famous Women Dinner Service

Here’s a piece from The Charleston Attic blog on the 140-piece dinner service featuring famous women created by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. It is one of the largest commissioned works produced by the artists and was commissioned in 1932.

‘The firm of Bell and Grant’ and the Famous Women Dinner Service.

The Virginia Woolf plate is pictured in Diane Gillespie’s The Sisters’ Arts: The Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell (1988, 1991), as illustration 4.13 on p. 199. Gillespie discusses the plates briefly on p. 198. The plate pictures a young Virginia Woolf in profile with her long hair secured at her neck or pinned up; it’s difficult to make out which.

According to Gillespie, the plates were divided into four groups and Woolf’s plate is included in the writers’ group. Woolf’s plate features a border of alternating squiggles and large dots. In a July 27, 2015, message to the VWoolf Listserv, Gillespie noted that she was able to see a number of the plates during the 1980s in the home of Lady Clark.

Ann Donlon wrote a Oct. 9, 2013, post about the plates on her blog after a visit to Charleston. Titled Dinner Plates, it includes images.

Also see Woolf on a plate, a 2009 post on Blogging Woolf about Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party that includes a Woolf plate.