a circular planished silver dish centred with a foil backed, hand painted enamel depicting the character Puck from William Shakespeare’s play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ shown as a young fairy with butterfly wings standing in a shallow stream annotated ‘Robin Goodfellow,’ the name Shakespeare gives to the “shrewd and knavish sprite.”
Engraved to the reverse ‘Omar Ramsden Me Fecit’
The enamel attributed to Jeanne Etève
A record of the sweetmeat dish appears in Omar Ramsden’s surviving workbook with a tracing and the notation ‘Puck or Robin Goodfellow enamel,’ the drawing dated 16th November, 1921.
One of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues is delivered by Puck at the end of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ where he likens the performance of a play to experiencing a dream, blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy:
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream…”
