For some people price was no object. In 1773 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, bought a 944-piece dinner and dessert service from English potter Josiah Wedgwood for £2700 – almost seventy times more than George and Martha Washington paid for their creamware set just three years earlier. Each piece in Catherine’s service, including this dinner plate, featured meticulously hand-painted landscape scenes and decorative borders. The small green frog at the top alludes to her country home, popularly known as “The Frog Palace.” The base price for this creamware set was £1487. An additional £318 was paid to the thirty-three ceramic painters who spent more than a year adding the decoration. That left more than £800 pounds for Wedgwood and his partner Thomas Bentley—a handsome profit given that most English potters at this time made less than £1 per week.