SKU: p1187

America the Beautiful collection, -Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies- by artist Larry K. Martin. First issue in a numbered series. Bradford Exchange, 1995. Plate size approx. 8 inches. Suggested retail $50.00.

On that day in 1893 when a young English teacher, Katherine Lee Bates, reached the summit of Colorado's Pike's Peak, 14,110 feet (4,301 meters) above sea level, she had no idea she was soon to become a legend. She probably just wanted to have the feeling of -standing on top of the world.-

Once there, she was thunderstruck by what she saw. At this height she felt almost a part of the bright blue sky; there were even a few puffy clouds at her feet.
And everywhere she looked washer magnificent America!

She stayed as long as she could and as she gazed eagerly in every direction, a poem began to form in her mind. Quite naturally, the first line was: -Oh beautiful for spacious skies...- Her poem, America the Beautiful, touched the heart of all Americans. It was set to music by Samuel A. Ward and became an enduring patriotic hymn.

Now her beloved hymn has inspired artist Larry K. Martin to illustrate its first evocative line by showing a great bald eagle soaring past a towering mountain. -Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies,- is Plate One in his magnificent America the Beautiful collection.

The creation of the fine collector's plate you have just acquired and whose authenticity is certified by this document is the result of work by an international cadre of skilled artisans. After the plate art was created in the United States, a fine ceramic transfer, incorporating pigments carefully chosen to faithfully re-create the vibrant beauty of the artist's original, was created in France and Germany and permanently fired into the fine Japanese porcelain plate body at more than 1,460° Fahrenheit by talented craftsmen and craftswomen in the United States.