This edition of Fresh Shops is all about gettin' your learn on while stuffin' your face.  Enter thesupremes.

I was cruising through Pounce when I caught a glimpse of these melamine plates (okay in the dishwasher, but not in the microwave), and then these words from thesupremes shop announcement, "...to make the extraordinary...intersect with the ordinary..."  The images on these plates are handdrawn and depict a current Supreme Court Justice or relate to a specific case in the American jurisprudential cannon. 

Six plates that commemorate the Interstate Commerce Clause   

or just Hammer v. Dagenhart. 

Six plates relating to a free speech case in which speech can cause harm

  or just Daniel Ellsberg.

In case (no pun intended) you were wondering, the large photo above is the Planned Parenthood commemorative.  There's also Punitive Damages, not complete without the most recent tobacco litigation, and Habeas Corpus.  I caught up with Jose, who's a 3L at Harvard Law School and was kind enough to answer a few questions, after he put his son to sleep.

Do you browse and buy on Etsy, and if so, what?
I do browse and buy stuff on Etsy. For Valentines I bought my wife a Lucite bracelet with real bugs in it from KolosStudio.

What attracted you to Etsy to sell your work?
A number of friends told me that I should try to sell plates on Etsy. They mentioned having success selling their own work there. I played around with the site and instantly fell in love with the interface and the wide variety of stuff available there.

In regards to the idea behind the Learned Handmade Plate Project, do you think people will be more likely to buy and use your plates OR buy and hang them as a political/historical art piece? How do you feel about either scenario?
I don’t know how people will use the plates. To be perfectly honest, I would be delighted for people to use them either way. I think there is something nice about the idea of something as mundane and necessary as eating into an act of civic engagement. And when I made the plates I had that in mind. However, if people want to hang them on the wall, I think that is great, too. There is a long tradition of plates being used as wall decoration and I think the Learned Handmade Plates create an interesting tension with that traditional purely decorative type of plate.

Thanks to thesupremes for the time and the great shop.  For those Handmade Wedding Series readers who what you see, Jose "would love to do plate wedding portraits."