If you have ever wanted to own a piece of Dorchester history, now you can. The Dorchester Historical Society has reproduced limited edition plates featuring the Clapp’s Favorite Pear.

The plates are approximately 7 to 7½ inches in diameter and each one is handmade by the Pottery Shed in West Concord, who also does reproductions for the Dedham Historical Society.

DHS board member Mary Moran suggested the idea of a commemorative Dorchester plate. Moran, along with fellow board member Anne Schmalz, chose a plate from the Society’s collection. The original plate was made by Dorchester Pottery Works, which closed in 1979. The beehive-style kiln still stands next to Bay Cove’s Small Wonders Nursery School on Victory Road and is a Boston landmark. The structure is only 10 feet tall inside and 28 feet in diameter, “but the thing is, you can see it!” DHS President Earl Taylor chuckles. Bay Cove currently maintains it.

Some DHS members have purchased plates, but the Society sold a few at last week’s Lower Mills Holiday Stroll.

“I’m just thrilled that we can do something that is related to history in a couple of ways,” Taylor said. “You get a kind of double there, Dorchester double, with the pottery and the pear.”

The pear design was no accident. William Clapp and his three sons, Thaddeus, Lemuel and Frederick, experimented with and profited from the hybridization of apples and pears, as well as flowers. In 1840, the crossbreeding resulted in the creation of Clapp’s Favorite Pear, a hybrid of the Flemish Beauty Pear and Bartlett Pear, and which adorns the commemorative plates.

The pear on the plate and the pear that sits in Edward Everett Square are indeed the same. The giant bronze fruit at the intersection of Mass Ave., Dot Ave. and Columbia Road represents the Clapp family’s influence on Dorchester.

“People don’t think of Dorchester [as a farming community] and yet up until 150 years ago, it was really very rural,” said Schmalz. In fact, at its onset, most of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society was made up of Dorchester and Roxbury residents, at that time two agricultural towns.

The first 25 of 100 limited edition plates have already been sold but a new batch is in the making and will be available for purchase at DHS’s annual holiday party on Dec. 11 from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. at the William Clapp House gift shop.

“It’s all happened so quickly and the success of the sales has surprised us, so we weren’t really quite ready” Schmalz added with a laugh.

Proceeds will go to more plate production, of course, but also to fixing up the three historical houses maintained by the Society and any events held.

“There are constant repair needs in all of our properties so perhaps we will designate some specific use of the money [there],” Schmalz said.

Each plate is $60 but the Society is also offering a bundle price of $75 for the purchase of a plate and either the Dorchester’s Collections book or Dorchester seal (each is $25). To pre-order a plate, contact DHS President Earl Taylor at Ermmwwt@aol.com.