✨ Education Corner with Lili, or 'Surprise! I was a ceramics historian before moving into funeral care!' ✨
Wanna know more about these gorgeous designs? Buckle up.
Starting strong at the top, we have a pattern known as 'Blue Willow'. I can't make out WHO made this particular one as the main identifiers are missing but I'll use Mason's as a baseline since they made the second plate in the image set.
Typically, a piece of Blue Willow would have looked something like this:
(Mason's, late 1800s - early 1900s and Churchill China, current production)
There are hundreds of willow designs, each subtly different, but most share defining features:
- A bridge over water with two, three, or four people crossing
- Two birds flying above the scene
The Willow design emerged in England in the 1790s as a response to the demand for traditional Chinese designs. Because why spend money shipping pottery from China when you could just make dupes at home and pocket the extra profit?
Nobody is quite sure who created the iconic design (which is why so many copycats were able to flourish, even to this day). Regardless, Blue Willow was a roaring success and every manufacturer wanted a piece of the pie.
Over time, the pattern developed a story to help sell it to the public. Songs and poems were written to celebrate Blue Willow and its supposed depiction of two star-crossed lovers such as this one from the Victorian period.
Chinese vessel sailing by
Weeping willow hanging o’er
Bridge of three men maybe four
Seem to take up all the land
Apple trees with apples on
A pretty fence to end my song"
To keep a competitive edge, Willow also became available in many colours, thought blue remained a favourite with buyers.
(Black Willow by Burleigh, 2010s & Pink Willow by Victoria Porcelain, 1940s-1950s)
Willow came in all shapes and manufacturing types; plates, jugs, tea sets, ironstone, earthenware, bone china. You name it, there's a willow for it out there.
While Willow fell out of fashion several years ago, a handful of manufacturers do still make this traditional design. However, the quality and methods of creation are (typically) very different to older pieces.
The second plate, which is more identifiable, is a piece of ironstone from Mason's.
Now this!! This beauty is called Vista and is all Mason's.
Vista was designed to emulate the feel of willow whilst standing as an independent design. Vista was designed and produced entirely in-house by the artists at Mason's in a beautiful shade of red.
The process of making these is labour intensive and extremely skilled work. Creating the means for mass production of this pattern alone may have taken years, being painstakingly engraved by hand onto giant rollers which would be used to create the final design transfers.
As far as I'm aware, only a single company in the world still uses the traditional decorating method that would have used to create Vista and that's Burleigh. This is what an engraved roller looks like:
(Burleigh, current production)
Even today, with the advent of laser technology, these cost thousands of pounds and take months to make. And they used to do that by hand!
Vista was Mason's own design, patented and manufactured only by them in the mid-1900s.
The type of pottery seen here is called ironstone (also ironware), which is a type of stoneware made using a specific blend of clay and feldspar.
The manufacturing of this design was only for a short period of time and was very much a labour of love. Each piece could take weeks to be created, with multiple stages of manufacturing needed.
When it came time to add the pattern, decorators weren't even allowed to touch a piece until they'd trained for several years.
Bonus fact: Decorators were almost always women! They would have worked in a dedicated section of the factory (called the decorating shop or transfer shop) and were treated very well around the factory for their level of skill.
(Yes, internal pottery politics existed. It still does and is actually kind of hilarious to witness in action.)
Classic designs like Vista really are gorgeous and if you ever come across intact ironware like the above, I recommend you buy it while you can and actively use it in your home!
It's heavy duty and will survive most drops, bumps and other household accidents. There's a level of quality in the creation that you rarely find in modern ceramics.
I'm not exaggerating when I say this will outlive most household items if taken care of.
The method used to get the design onto the pieces is called 'underglaze transferring' which means the design is set beneath a seal and is very hard to damage.
Many modern productions place designs onto the finished whitewear without an additional glaze to lock it in place. This eventually leads to the design scratching, fading and even peeling over time.
My own ironstone is from the 1960s and has survived over a dozen babies, crazy pets, several house moves, and more drops than I'm happy to admit to. But it's still going without a single scratch or chip or crack.
It's a trooper and I love it.
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