1906-1935, GREEN PRINTED SCRIPT L AND WREATH MARK, GILT PATTERN NO. 1830/Z.21, SIGNED W.(ILLIAM) H. MORLEY

See Dorothy Robinson with Bill Feeny, The Official Price Guide to American Pottery and Porcelain, 1980, p. 139 for a discussion on these plates, here listed as, 'Perhaps the most famous set of game birds by Lenox'. Financed by the millionaire Colonel Anthony Kuser of Bernardsville, NJ, an expedition to the Far East was made to sketch and photograph these foreign pheasants en situ, resulting in six volumes of studies on which to base the painting of his plates. Kuser generously left these documents to the factory for future use and they are now in the hands of a private collector. It is likely that the plates offered here are samples or are from variant sets as the backstamps differ.