# Dinner plate, riveted

> Broken into three and stapled back together.

https://vitrine.themes.dev/collection/plate/

- Made by: Unknown pottery, Staffordshire
- Date: About 1900
- Material: Earthenware, iron staples
- Size: 25 cm across
- Cost new: Threepence; the mend, a penny
- Came from: Bought at auction, 2016
- On view: Made to Mend, in the long case

Before glue that could hold a plate, a china mender drilled tiny holes either side of a crack and bridged them with metal staples. The mend often cost more than the plate.

This is the one object in Made to Mend that did not belong to the Merrins. We bought it because the family’s own riveted plate was broken again in 1974, and that time it went in the bin.