A Chorus Line of China
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 4th of September is “many identical objects”. With my love of antiques and collectables, you would think this theme would be easy. However, the difficulty with antiques and collectables is that they are seldom similar, never mind identical, like items manufactured en mass today. So, this week I have opted for some of my blue and white Willow Pattern breakfast china. I do hope that you like my choice for the theme, and that it makes you smile. As a child, I grew up with three different sets of everyday crockery in use in my household: a fine white bone china set with gilding for dinner, a bright floral pattern set for luncheon and a blue and white Willow Pattern set used at breakfast. Old habits die hard, and to this day, I still use Willow Pattern crockery to eat my breakfast from, and only my breakfast from. This includes these bread and butter plates. You can see seven here on the shelf, however my breakfast set consists of twelve place settings. Even as a child, I was fascinated by the elegant designs that were covered up by toast or porridge, and my maternal Grandparents used that to their advantage, encouraging the finicky and reluctant eater that I was as a child to finish my breakfast and reveal the design. My love for it was further enhanced when my Grandmother told me the love story of the Willow Pattern.
Once there was a wealthy Mandarin, who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-se. She had fallen in love with her father's humble clerk, Chang, angering her father. It was inappropriate for them to marry due to their difference in social class. He dismissed the young man after discovering Chang and Koong-se in a lovers’ tryst in a summer house in a far corner of his estate, and built a high fence around his palace to keep the lovers apart. However, the lovers wrote letters to one another, taken between them by Koong-se’s handmaid and her husband the Mandarin’s gardener. The Mandarin was planning for his daughter to marry a powerful Duke. The Duke arrived by boat to claim his bride, bearing a casket of jewels as a gift. The wedding was to take place on the day the blossom fell from the giant peach tree in the Mandarin’s garden. On the eve of Koong-se's wedding to the Duke, Chang, disguised as a servant, slipped into the palace unnoticed with the help of Koong-se’s handmaid. Chang gave the Mandarin, the Duke and all his men a sleeping draught. The handmaid helped the lovers escape with the casket of jewels, before the alarm was raised. They ran over a bridge to the gardener’s cottage, however they were followed by the Mandarin, whip in hand, who had not drunk his drugged wine. He returned to the palace and raised his own army who went to the gardener’s cottage. They caught the gardener and the handmaid, put them to death and razed the cottage. However, the lovers escaped on the Duke's ship to the safety of a secluded island, where they had two children and lived happily for years, growing flowers and plants which made Chang famous as a plant propagator far and wide. However, this fame was to be the lovers’ downfall, for one day, the Duke learned of their refuge. Hungry for revenge, he sent soldiers, who captured the lovers and put them and their children to death. The gods, moved by their plight, transformed the lovers, Koong-se and Chang, into a pair of doves.
The Willow Pattern is a distinctive and elaborate chinoiserie pattern used on ceramic kitchen and housewares. It became popular at the end of the Eighteenth Century in England when, in its standard form, it was developed by English ceramic artists combining and adapting motifs inspired by fashionable hand-painted blue-and-white wares imported from China. Its creation occurred at a time when mass-production of decorative tableware, at Stoke-on-Trent and elsewhere, was already making use of engraved and printed glaze transfers, rather than hand-painting, for the application of ornament to standardized vessels.
A Chorus Line of China
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 4th of September is “many identical objects”. With my love of antiques and collectables, you would think this theme would be easy. However, the difficulty with antiques and collectables is that they are seldom similar, never mind identical, like items manufactured en mass today. So, this week I have opted for some of my blue and white Willow Pattern breakfast china. I do hope that you like my choice for the theme, and that it makes you smile. As a child, I grew up with three different sets of everyday crockery in use in my household: a fine white bone china set with gilding for dinner, a bright floral pattern set for luncheon and a blue and white Willow Pattern set used at breakfast. Old habits die hard, and to this day, I still use Willow Pattern crockery to eat my breakfast from, and only my breakfast from. This includes these bread and butter plates. You can see seven here on the shelf, however my breakfast set consists of twelve place settings. Even as a child, I was fascinated by the elegant designs that were covered up by toast or porridge, and my maternal Grandparents used that to their advantage, encouraging the finicky and reluctant eater that I was as a child to finish my breakfast and reveal the design. My love for it was further enhanced when my Grandmother told me the love story of the Willow Pattern.
Once there was a wealthy Mandarin, who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-se. She had fallen in love with her father's humble clerk, Chang, angering her father. It was inappropriate for them to marry due to their difference in social class. He dismissed the young man after discovering Chang and Koong-se in a lovers’ tryst in a summer house in a far corner of his estate, and built a high fence around his palace to keep the lovers apart. However, the lovers wrote letters to one another, taken between them by Koong-se’s handmaid and her husband the Mandarin’s gardener. The Mandarin was planning for his daughter to marry a powerful Duke. The Duke arrived by boat to claim his bride, bearing a casket of jewels as a gift. The wedding was to take place on the day the blossom fell from the giant peach tree in the Mandarin’s garden. On the eve of Koong-se's wedding to the Duke, Chang, disguised as a servant, slipped into the palace unnoticed with the help of Koong-se’s handmaid. Chang gave the Mandarin, the Duke and all his men a sleeping draught. The handmaid helped the lovers escape with the casket of jewels, before the alarm was raised. They ran over a bridge to the gardener’s cottage, however they were followed by the Mandarin, whip in hand, who had not drunk his drugged wine. He returned to the palace and raised his own army who went to the gardener’s cottage. They caught the gardener and the handmaid, put them to death and razed the cottage. However, the lovers escaped on the Duke's ship to the safety of a secluded island, where they had two children and lived happily for years, growing flowers and plants which made Chang famous as a plant propagator far and wide. However, this fame was to be the lovers’ downfall, for one day, the Duke learned of their refuge. Hungry for revenge, he sent soldiers, who captured the lovers and put them and their children to death. The gods, moved by their plight, transformed the lovers, Koong-se and Chang, into a pair of doves.
The Willow Pattern is a distinctive and elaborate chinoiserie pattern used on ceramic kitchen and housewares. It became popular at the end of the Eighteenth Century in England when, in its standard form, it was developed by English ceramic artists combining and adapting motifs inspired by fashionable hand-painted blue-and-white wares imported from China. Its creation occurred at a time when mass-production of decorative tableware, at Stoke-on-Trent and elsewhere, was already making use of engraved and printed glaze transfers, rather than hand-painting, for the application of ornament to standardized vessels.