Platter, 13 x 10 inches. Green transfer. Printed maker's mark for Thomas Till & Sons. This pattern was registered on 23 February 1883. The "Merina" pattern features a large vase patterned with stars at the right, supporting a large flowering hawthorn plant which grows up behind a rectangular cartouche. This cartouche features a windmill on the edge of water. At the left is a round cartouche with sailboats on the water. Behind this cartouche are leafy sprays. At the bottom is a rectangular cartouche with an overturned dinghy on the shore of the sea with a sunrise/sunset in the background. Doves in flight hover over and around this cartouche.

Of very old foundation, the Sytch Pottery was many years ago worked by Messrs. Keeling. The Sytch Pottery passed successively into the hands of Mr. R. Hall and Messrs. J. Hall & Sons. About 1832 Messrs. Barker, Sutton & Till took to the works, but at subsequent periods Mr. Barker and Mr. Sutton withdrew from the partnership. From 1850 it remained in the hands of Mr. Thomas Till, who was joined in partnership with his sons and the firm became Thomas Till & Sons. Besides earthenware of the usual average quality in which services and innumerable useful articles were made by them, Messrs. Till produced colored bodies of various kinds (cane, sage, drab, and lilac); stoneware of a hard and durable kind for jugs etc.; jet-glazed ware; terra cotta; enameled ware; and various colored lusters. These were principally intended for the home trade. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 the firm received a certificate of merit.