Set of dinnerware with designs by Rockwell Kent after his own illustrations for Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Semi-vitreous china with dark blue designs, glazed. Produced by Vernon Kilns in Vernon, California from 1938-1939.

“Kent’s designs were so popular they were even adapted for a line of dinnerware … Of course, most appropriate would be soup bowls to reenact the chowder dinner of Ishmael and Queequeg at Mrs. Hussey’s hotel in Nantucket”(Reese).
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Comprises: a coffee pot with lid, a sugar dish with lid, a beaker, 7 tea cups with saucers, 2 additional saucers (few small edge chips), a chocolate cup, 2 pasta bowls, 5 plates of 5 5/8” diameter, a dinner plate of 91/2” diameter, a side plate of 6 1/2”diameter, a serving bowl of 11 ¼” diameter, a serving plate of 16 5/8”diameter, and a fluted serving bowl of 11 5/8” diameter.
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Exhibited: “A Herman Melville Collection … on the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of his death, from the collection of William S. Reese,” Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University,1991, no. 48 (a single plate only).