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I am FINALLY going to actually start porcelain posting as I haven't indulged my special interest in a hot minute and I need some joy in my life right now
Willow Blue! One of the most recognizable blue-and-white porcelain patterns out there, Willow certainly wasn't the first nor the last, but it has become sort of the baseline for this style, known as Chinoiserie: Western designs meant to evoke 18th-century Chinese aesthetics.
China was the first to produce what is known as hard-paste porcelain, a formula that is more durable and can withstand higher firing temperatures while still retaining thin walls and small, intricate details within the molding. Soft-paste porcelain, on the other hand, is less durable and more prone to collapsing in the kiln or breaking after firing, and didn't retain a smooth, shiny finish as well as hard-paste. This difference meant Chinese export porcelain skyrocketed in popularity, and with it, Chinese designs and aesthetics at the time.
(Eventually Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony hired a man who claimed to be able to turn lead to gold to help him find the secret ingredient for hard-paste porcelain and, surprisingly, he actually found it! Kaolin, a soft, white clay, not only strengthened the porcelain paste but gave it a nice white finish. Good job, alchemist guy.)
While relatively new compared to the history of blue-and-white porcelain, Willow comes from a long history of imitating older Chinese designs to appeal to the market. Dutch studios produced earthenware with a white glaze atop and blue details to mimic this effect, and became widely popular, resulting in a boom of Dutch wares known as Delft. (Much like champagne, Real Delft (with a capital D) is only the earthenware produced within the city of Delft, while delft-lowercase-d is used for dutch-inspired blue-and-whiteware not originating from Delft. thus the cycle of imitation completes itself. borrowing from others is basically the entire history of porcelain, after all.)
While not 100% confirmed, most say Willow was designed by Thomas Minton in the late 1700s, who eventually ended up employed by Spode, a popular porcelain production company that somewhat still exists today! They merged with Royal Worchester in 2006, and patterns are still being produced now under the Spode name. (Spode has an interesting history all their own, including the invention of Bone China, but I'll leave that for a different post.)
Due to the pattern's popularity, there are countless variations, but most usually contain the same prominent features: willow trees (of course), a large, central building, a bridge with figures atop it, and two birds flying above. Also some form of intricately patterned border, though not all pieces include this part. It was also produced in a wide variety of colors, but because the iconic blue-and-white color palette was so popular, you'll mostly see the blue version.
If you ever find yourself walking through an antiques or consignment store, keep an eye out for patterns that look like this, you'll probably find more than a few!
(The picture is of my own Willow pieces from my collection. The small, brown dish is a soup bowl that was meant for restaurant use! The walls are intentionally much thicker to withstand regular use, and some of the pattern is worn off as well. The larger dish is some sort of serving platter I believe, kindly gifted to me by a friend.)
Willow Blue! One of the most recognizable blue-and-white porcelain patterns out there, Willow certainly wasn't the first nor the last, but it has become sort of the baseline for this style, known as Chinoiserie: Western designs meant to evoke 18th-century Chinese aesthetics.
China was the first to produce what is known as hard-paste porcelain, a formula that is more durable and can withstand higher firing temperatures while still retaining thin walls and small, intricate details within the molding. Soft-paste porcelain, on the other hand, is less durable and more prone to collapsing in the kiln or breaking after firing, and didn't retain a smooth, shiny finish as well as hard-paste. This difference meant Chinese export porcelain skyrocketed in popularity, and with it, Chinese designs and aesthetics at the time.
(Eventually Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony hired a man who claimed to be able to turn lead to gold to help him find the secret ingredient for hard-paste porcelain and, surprisingly, he actually found it! Kaolin, a soft, white clay, not only strengthened the porcelain paste but gave it a nice white finish. Good job, alchemist guy.)
While relatively new compared to the history of blue-and-white porcelain, Willow comes from a long history of imitating older Chinese designs to appeal to the market. Dutch studios produced earthenware with a white glaze atop and blue details to mimic this effect, and became widely popular, resulting in a boom of Dutch wares known as Delft. (Much like champagne, Real Delft (with a capital D) is only the earthenware produced within the city of Delft, while delft-lowercase-d is used for dutch-inspired blue-and-whiteware not originating from Delft. thus the cycle of imitation completes itself. borrowing from others is basically the entire history of porcelain, after all.)
While not 100% confirmed, most say Willow was designed by Thomas Minton in the late 1700s, who eventually ended up employed by Spode, a popular porcelain production company that somewhat still exists today! They merged with Royal Worchester in 2006, and patterns are still being produced now under the Spode name. (Spode has an interesting history all their own, including the invention of Bone China, but I'll leave that for a different post.)
Due to the pattern's popularity, there are countless variations, but most usually contain the same prominent features: willow trees (of course), a large, central building, a bridge with figures atop it, and two birds flying above. Also some form of intricately patterned border, though not all pieces include this part. It was also produced in a wide variety of colors, but because the iconic blue-and-white color palette was so popular, you'll mostly see the blue version.
If you ever find yourself walking through an antiques or consignment store, keep an eye out for patterns that look like this, you'll probably find more than a few!
(The picture is of my own Willow pieces from my collection. The small, brown dish is a soup bowl that was meant for restaurant use! The walls are intentionally much thicker to withstand regular use, and some of the pattern is worn off as well. The larger dish is some sort of serving platter I believe, kindly gifted to me by a friend.)
no subject
Date: 2024-11-22 10:32 pm (UTC)From:Stupid question: what pigments is used for the blue here? Smalt/cobalt? How is the pattern typically applied to the plates? (I assume before firing.) Sorry, I don't know much about ceramics... ^_^
Also, are there any common discrepancies between Chinoiserie patterns and the actual Chinese styles they're meant to be reminiscent of?
no subject
Date: 2024-11-23 01:53 am (UTC)From:I'm pretty sure it is cobalt! in older designs (like actual Chinese export porcelain) it would have been hand-painted on to the piece before being covered with a clear glaze and fired. Willow got popular during the time of transferware though, which involves making prints from an etching on to paper or other malleable materials that can be placed on the unfired vessels and burn up in the kiln, leaving only the pattern behind. the earliest versions of transferware would print the designs onto sheets of gelatin! nowadays I think some specific type of paper is used.
based off my own limited knowledge of Chinese porcelain, it seems like Willow and other Chinoiserie patterns in general focus a lot more heavily on the geometric designs, and leave less negative space (this isn't a confirmed fact or anything, but I have the sneaking suspicion that European Rococo sentiments had a hand in that - Rococo-era porcelain is absolutely filled with the most design possible, with little room for negative space). overall though, a LOT of porcelain manufacturers just straight up copied each others' designs beat for beat, so lots of Chinoiserie is very similar if not identical to authentic Chinese patterns. makes it very hard for an amateur porcelain-enjoyer to figure out the difference sometimes!
no subject
Date: 2024-11-24 08:08 pm (UTC)From:Ah, that would make it easier to mass-produce! So what was the like... composition of the cobalt pigment used for the process? More like a glaze, or a paint, or an ink...?
Huh, so a mix of things that looked Chinese but were tweaked for fashionable European sensibilities, and outright copies of Chinese patterns. Interesting! Did porcelain manufacturers ever fight over competitors "stealing" their patterns? And how did manufacturers go about copying pre-existing patterns?
no subject
Date: 2024-11-25 06:13 pm (UTC)From:the thing that mystifies me most when reading about porcelain history is the complete lack of fighting between manufacturers! there was certainly lots of secrecy between studios, like during the race to find the right hard-paste formulas, but I suppose once your designs are out there and in the hands of consumers it was harder to keep a lid on things like original designs. my best guess is that before the days of mass-production it didn't matter so much, as most production studios survived off commissions from noble families (Madame de Pompadour nearly single-handedly kept Sevres alive and elevated them to an unheard of status in the porcelain world because she commissioned them so much) and as such what they made was entirely up to the whims of their commissioner - and after mass production, it was pretty commonplace to make designs 'inspired' by other things anyway, in order to appeal to market trends.
so far as I can tell, lots of manufacturers would just look at other pieces and draw their own version of it. a while back I found a few database websites that compiled old porcelain pattern books (I really need to find those again...) and they essentially had pages of sketches that they'd compile into booklets and number/name to look up later. likely they had artists sketching these up while referencing a variety of other sources to come up with the most appealing designs that they knew would sell. of course, not every manufacturer worked like this, but for ~1800s and later European studios, I believe that was pretty common practice!
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