MCG
commemorative plates now available
by Ellen Gladden Jones
The MCG Bookstore has a new unique token for employees, students, alumni and retirees of the nation’s 13th-oldest medical school.
A limited number of commemorative Wedgewood China plates, featuring Medical College of Georgia historical sites, are available in the bookstore. Drawn and designed by Georgia residents, the plates resemble the Georgia History Plates series sold by the Transylvania Women’s Club in Sandersville, Ga.
“We sell the Georgia history series and over the years, people would ask if they could have one of those plates with the Old Medical College on it,” said Dianne Mundy, bookstore manager. “Those plates were designed in 1933 by the women’s club as a fundraiser and they aren’t adding any more to the series.”
A project over three years in the making, the commemorative plate features photographs of MCG founder Dr. Milton Antony: the original City Hospital building on Greene Street, where he began teaching in 1829; the old Medical College on Telfair Street, which opened in 1835; the ‘new’ City Hospital, built behind the Old Medical College in 1869; the Newton Building, a renovated orphanage on 13th Street where MCG classes were held from 1913 to 1954; the original University Hospital, the teaching hospital of the school built in 1915; and the 1920 Wilhenford Children’s Hospital, the first children’s hospital in the state and the south. Georgia vegetation – dogwood flowers, Vidalia onions, peaches, pine cones, peanuts and cotton – are sketched around the buildings.
“We were so privileged to work with Dr. (Lois) Ellison (MCG Medical Historian in Residence) and Sarah (Braswell, Dr. Ellison’s assistant) on this because we wanted it to be absolutely historically correct,” said Mrs. Mundy. “I liked them being a part of the process because they had pictures of these buildings I had never seen before.”
Working with artist Marylene Williams of Cordele, Ga., and designer MariEdith Tanner of Dublin, Ga., the MCG team agreed on a border that resembled the Georgia History plates, “but we changed it enough to make it our very own,” said Mrs. Mundy.
The journey to the finished product was filled with many hurdles, but the team persevered through artwork redesigns and conversations with Wedgewood’s England and New Jersey manufacturing centers to ensure plates were authentically stamped “Wedgewood Fine China: Made in England.”
Available only at the MCG Bookstore, the plates are $56.95 each. Store hours are Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plans are under way to add other retail locations across the state. When the initial order of 1,000 Delft-blue plates has sold, the bookstore will consider ordering the plates in the rose color of the Georgia History Plate series.
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