Pink Roses on Fabrique

This is an unmarked dinner plate, Dutchess, Vintage 749 & Harmony Rose are similar patterns but I cannot see this one..

Could this be called Yvette? http://www.trademe.co.nz/a.aspx?id=856673391
Whoops, no brown fern behind, will keep looking

This pattern is the same as Paragon d747, but it doesn't have the Fabrique background, so this will have another name !!!

May be one of those "no name"  patterns that Henry Sawyer, 2nds shop manager, and I were responsible for.

Twice a year I would do a sales trip around the Islands. Fiji, Tonga,  Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, etc flogging seconds and overstocks.

Before each trip Henry and I would go thru the decal/transfers that were considered end of line, overstocks and so on and have them fired on surplus glost ware such as Fabrique or have bisque ware glazed and the patterns applied.

This led to many strange never to be repeated pieces of Crown Lynn. One that springs to mind from your Gallery that may be an example is the Vintage design on the Dorothy Thorpe shape.

As a rule Henry was not to have all pieces of a popular pattern, such as Sapphire, available in the shop at the same time. This was to appease the retailers who hated the shop and felt it competed with them. Also it ensured customers would come back frequently hoping the salt & pepper or what ever was in stock.

In my case the cartons I sold were assorted designs. There was a substantial premium if customers wanted there dinnerware to match!

Thanks for that insight Dale, I've heard that same story from various sources and I'm sure that there are a lot of patterns that will never be named because of it.

However I have made a Database of every pattern that I've come across that Crown Lynn made and so far it has 2301 pattern names and our site has 1159 named patterns and 304 without names, so we have many more to find yet, at least 1142 and I have a strong feeling that there are a lot more named patterns to come.

These patterns that you refer to would not have had any back stamps would they?  So we could separate the patterns with no stamps from the Kelston Ceramics, Genuine Ironstone, etc etc would you agree?

The journey continues and just now the Portage Museum is turning up heaps of pattern information and even though it takes up a lot of time, it is well worth it as nobody else has gathered this popular resource anywhere else in the world.

Most would have had a backstamp as this was usually applied to the bisque ware before glazing. There is another whole story regarding the constant battle between production and sales regarding backstamps, generic vs pattern names. For the factory the use of a generic stamp gave them far more flexibility than having pattern names.

As far as naming patterns, when I was there there were many times that no names were given, only a number that was only recorded not applied to the article. This was mainly with one off production such as using decals/transfers that were specials from the suppliers. These could be end of lines, over runs of production for another ceramic factory that had no plans for export to NZ, etc, etc.

Some would be Murray Curvex designs where a few thousand plates in a different colour could be added to a standard production run to give variety for specials.

Crown Lynn was rather unique in that it used almost every decorating technique available unlike most overseas producers who had much larger production runs and could concentrate on a few methods. Because we were covering the market from top to bottom we had far more "Brand Names" than most factories.