A Centennial in Ceramics

Clearly, I'm fascinated by simplified graphics that are meant to represent places and their people. For instance, I've written about bas relief doors in St. Paul and Rome, and paintings in St. Paul.

Today's it's a 1958 ceramic trivet, made by Red Wing Potteries to commemorate Minnesota's first centennial as a state:


The back details look like this:


I love how Red Wing and Minnesota have grown larger than Texas. (And may I say, that is an extremely odd map overall. What is going on north of New Mexico? Not to mention poor, poor Wisconsin.)

The iconography of the front is pretty simplified, compared to the much larger doors and paintings I've commented on before:


In this case, we've got a 1950s headband woman on the left. She and her male counterpart generally wouldn't look out of place in a Hitler youth promo. She holds a farm with pine trees while he holds a city, dominated by a Christian cross. The two vignettes are connected by water and some type of battleship (just kidding, it's a barge).

Quite a period piece. Now we're almost 60 years into the second century of the state, and I hope most people realize we can't be represented in this simplified way anymore.