Vanessa Bell @ Charleston in Lewes

The Famous Women Dinner Service is a collection of 50 hand-decorated plates by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, celebrating famous women throughout history.

The portraits, subdivided into Women of Letters, Queens, Beauties, Dancers and Actresses – include George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, 10th-century Japanese poet Murasaki and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (pictured with her spaniel Flush); the Queen of Sheba and Elizabeth I; Dante’s Beatrice and the pre-Raphaelite Elizabeth Siddal; Greta Garbo and Ellen Terry. Many of these women lead complex and scrutinised lives, resisting marriage in favour of unconventional domestic arrangements and individual freedom.