One of the best known cup-plate series is Hall’s “Hampshire Scenery,” with borders of primroses, hepatica, and other flowers resembling many of the Clews borders. Their color is rich blue. John Hall & Sons were Staffordshire potters (1810-1820), whose marks on wares Chaffers places in the “uncertain” list. Then there is a “Quadrupeds Series.” The mark on this resembles an extended bell, on which appears the name “I. HALL” in capital letters, with the word “QUADRUPEDS” in crude capital letters below, on a curtain-like extension with inverted flutings. But far more beautiful than either of these sets, and more interesting to the American collector, are those of a series in rich blue, one of which shows the Park Square Theatre, Boston, and bears the characteristic oak-leaf and acorn border of R. Stevenson and Williams. All the designs of Ralph Stevenson are eagerly sought by collectors of old china. The Stevenson works were in Cobridge, Staffordshire, but all record of both potter and pottery seems to have disappeared. Another cup-plate series contains a view of the first United States Mint, Philadelphia, and has the characteristic border--of scrolls, eagles, and flowers--of Joseph Stubbs. This potter made comparatively few pieces for the American market. From 1790 to 1830 he was owner of the Dale Hall Works at Burslem. His cup-plates are among the most desired objects of the sort. Many cup-plates bore mottoes and verses such as those of the Liverpool type, a Romance Series, for instance, containing one known as “Returning Hopes,” with the ardent verse appearing thereon as follows: When seamen to their homes return, And meet their wives or sweethearts dear, Each loving lass with rapture burns, To find her long-lost lover near. These Liverpool cup-plates, by reason of their pictorial nature, have always been popular with collectors, hence the scarcity of them in antique and curio shops. Private collectors, too, seem loath to part with specimens of such printed wares. The glass cup-plates in native American manufacture are in no sense comparable esthetically with the cup-plates of porcelain and pottery of foreign fabrique. Still they are interesting historically. The majority of the glass cup-plates were crystalline glass, though some were colored--blue, green, yellow, brown, amber, rose, purple, etc. There were many glass factories in America in colonial days as well as in the nineteenth century, and American households were well supplied by them with cup-plates, although in design these were, more often than not, of comparatively little beauty. Among the patterned cup-plate wares the collector will find, many varieties of the hundreds of varieties of the “Willow” pattern may with reasonable certainty be traced to their various potters; but this is a special study in itself, and one entailing the [Illustration: _Courtesy of Mary H. Northend and Mr. William A. Cooper_ Cup-Plates