The lower left-hand plate is evidently the Chinese design from which the English potters derived the well-known and favourite "willow pattern." After Thomas Turner, of Caughley, had printed it on china in 1780, and Josiah Spode in 1784 had employed it on his earthenware in Staffordshire, all the other potters commenced to make the same design with slightly different details, mainly in the fret border. The other plate on the right hand is the well-known "aster" pattern, so frequently adopted by English potters in blue-printed cream ware. The two upper octagonal plates show the two styles of dark blue and light blue under-glaze painting employed by the Chinese; and the Staffordshire potter, true to his models, followed in his under-glaze blue-printing these tones. The period when the rich deep dark-blue-printed ware was in vogue is from the early nineteenth century to about 1825. Light blue printing was employed from 1790 till the deep blue supplanted it, and when the craze for deep blue had spent itself the light blue again became fashionable until printing in colour in the middle period of the nineteenth century came to be largely practised.
In the treatment of the border in the Oriental example we illustrate, it will be noticed how Josiah Spode and others, including the fine school at Leeds, who were printing in under-glaze blue in 1790, and the potters at Swansea, followed this decorative treatment. Spode in particular had a great fondness for Chinese subjects. We illustrate ([p. 345]) a blue-printed dish by him, where, as was his wont, he introduced, quite incongruously, a Gothic castle. The fine, rich colouring of this dish is most noticeable.
In the Spode earthenware Jug and Plate illustrated ([p. 331]), it will be seen that the plate, known as the "Bridge" pattern, closely follows the design of the Chinese porcelain plate ([p. 327]), and the jug is decorated with the familiar "Willow" pattern. Another variation of the "Willow" design is found on the Turner Cream-ware Dish, illustrated, having a band of embossed wickerwork and a pierced border. This piece has the impressed mark Turner.
A similar Oriental influence is seen in the dark blue transfer-printed dish by William Adams, of Greengates (see illustration, [p. 341]). The inclination here is towards figure subjects, and the decorative use of the exotic bird, as shown in the centre panel of this dish, finds a place on some of Mason's early blue-printed dishes. Of the colour of the dishes of William Adams, of Greengates, it may be remarked that for richness of tone in the under-glaze blue he introduced in 1787 they have never been surpassed.
What is the Willow pattern?—The name "willow-pattern" has been so frequently mentioned in connection with the subject of old English earthenware and china that it will be of service to state something of the details of the history of this particular pattern, which seems to have unaccountably seized hold of popular imagination.
DISH, TRANSFER-PRINTED IN DEEP BLUE, BY ROGERS.
Subject—the Naval Fight between the Chesapeake and Shannon.
(In the collection of Miss Feilden.)
DISH, TRANSFER-PRINTED IN BLUE.
Mark impressed "Adams" (of Greengates).
(In the collection of Mr. Russell Allan.)