Serving plate:New York Worlds Fair 1940

Perhaps more important than the great national expositions themselves and their trumpeting of American principles and progress are the things visitors took home from them - the commemorative souvenirs that reminded them of where they had been and who they were supposed to be. No other single event produced more souvenir merchandise than the New York World's Fair. Nine hundred manufacturers were licensed by the Fair Corporation to employ the image of the Trylon and Perisphere on more than 25,000 different objects. Creating a kind of instant nostalgia, souvenirs purchased at the events they commemorate - including the Cronin China Company's 1940 plate from the New York World's Fair - are supposed to help us identify with the ideals that the fair espoused. Decorated with a brightly colored, stylized Art Deco pattern, the central image depicts the fair's most recognizable icon, the "Trylon and Perisphere." The 700-foot-high Trylon spire and round Perisphere as wide as a city block housed "Democracity," the fair's main exhibit. Representing organizers' utopian ideals, "Democracity" envisioned a future United States in which companies used technology to make consumer goods that solved all of life's problems.