These plates based on a map of Rome are the first set of dinnerware to be realized from my Urban Icons project, a series of iconic "maps" of cities within circles. It's a project I've been on for over 15 years, since a visit to the museum under the parvis of Nôtre-Dame in Paris, which featured a model of the earliest Paris: a wall, in the center of which was an island in the middle of the river, on which was a church.

The sites on the plates are shown in their geographic position on Nolli's ubquitous map of Rome (1748) on the following page. While not true to scale, relationships are fairly accurate. Only the dinner plate has all the sites and features; they appear and disappear on the other pieces (the salad plate has the open space, of course, and the river appears on soup plate, cup, and saucer.

Prototype plates were hand-painted and produced from the computer-generated designs, by Ceramiche U. Grazia, of Deruta, Italy, as part of their visiting artists program. Grazia has been producing majolica, in both traditional and contemporary designs, for hundreds of years, and supplies many of this country's finest stores.

Ultimately, I decided that hand painting could not reflect my intention for the designs, and in 2006 I was finally able to get them produced domestically, using decals that were faithful to the original design intent.