Midwinter Potato Plate

Some time ago on a whim I purchased an old-style W. R. Midwinter cake plate. I think I might have only used it once for cakes and since then to keep unruly potatoes in order in their dark cupboard. I liked its decor, a brown landscape with vividly tinted figures from which there seemed to be a word-picture aching to emerge: 

...

It is a landscape drawn in the round. In the farthest distance are trees with bulbous foliage like succulent plants, drawn as if so many caterpillars were piled up and balanced on boughs, teeter-tottering poles which have tough elbow-like angles to them and have each been given a margin of punctuation marks. The trees stand under cumulonimbus that are made to have a grained texture like wood, but it might be that they are actually mountains topped with red volcanic clouds.

Next to the centre of the scene a faceless wig is balanced upon a pile of pancakes. They are perched on top of a four-pillared structure the same colour red as several loaf-roofed houses pictured in the distance. Near these, a construction consisting of further precariously balanced sections appears to be still standing despite having become half-smothered in volcanic dust.

Oblivious of the complete environmental breakdown oozing towards them as a flow of lava channeled underneath the arches of a bridge drawn with drastically swerving perspective, a couple walk towards us arm in arm. They are conversing, and it is quite obvious that we are meant to understand them as a courting couple. The male gestures derisively towards another figure leaning back on one elbow to their left, who is perched on top of a recumbent, green, many legged creature, as if to say, 'Hey, look at this lazy lout, he has subdued this beast but now doesn't know what to do with it'. But the lout ignores them to look beyond, not to the chaos unfolding, but two more people who have paused under an arch in a building to the far right. This couple are quite different in emotional tone. They are pictured as having happened upon the scene unfolding in their full moment of horror, corralled into the devastation by the wall to their left and backlit by the late afternoon sun which causes shadows to fall across the whole scene. We can see that the figure wearing a blue full-length robe has raised its hands to its face, perhaps to call out, or maybe wipe away tears. While the other holds out a short, thin stick, perhaps to indicate their vision, or possibly to attempt some defence, which seems to unlikely to succeed. 

The only other figure in the scene is pictured in the middle distance sitting on a kind of vehicle, preparing to pass over the bridge while driving in front of them a four-legged creature. We can see that a second creature of the same type has already passed over the bridge, possibly leading but perhaps being chased.

This soon to be destroyed Eden is captured within a circular net, crested with equally-spaced white crenellations, beyond which is a desert of lava and then a hedge of twisting roses. Situated beyond this point can only be the end-of-the-world, represented by a repeating pattern of blank-faced four-petalled, pimpernel blooms.