Nearly everyone over a certain age had a grandma or great aunt, perhaps even a mother who had at least one piece of Willow Ware, a pattern familiar to everyone. It tells a sad, doomed Chinese love story which varied according to time and place. Millions of pieces of Willow Ware were made beginning in the late eighteenth century and so popular was it most households had an entire set or at least a few pieces to show off their modernity.
The popular porcelain or earthenware was designed and made in England, not Asia as you might at first expect. Those Chinese motif were labeled with such names as Pagoda, Canton, Nanking or just Willow Ware, each a bit different than the other but which eventually all were called Willow.
It is believed that overall there were nearly two hundred makers which used the Willow Ware pattern including, of course, the best known ones like Wedgewood, Davenport, Adams, Copeland, Ridgway, Spode, Meigh and Johnson and many more, at factories in Leeds, Swansea, Liverpool, Rockingham in Britain, all for export.
A most important milestone in pottery-making was achieved in 1752 when John Sadler at Liverpool "invented" transfer-printing on pottery/ceramics. Before that any and all designs on dish ware of any sort had to be applied by hand, a slower process and naturally more expensive because an artistic eye was necessary.
With transfer-printing, however, nearly anyone with a steady hand could use the almost fool-proof method. First, a design was engraved (by an able hand) on a copper plate from which a well-inked tissue paper was taken from the plate and transferred to the surface of the moist piece. Firing the piece in the kiln set the pattern to the ware, then it was glazed according to usual process. Laying the tissue on the ware carefully was less of a task than brush, paint and eye. It revolutionized the ceramic industry.
The transfer-printing process quickly developed throughout Britain where millions of pieces were manufactured to be sent throughout the entire world but it was Thomas Turner of Caughley (sometimes called the Salopian Works) who developed many efficient methods which sped up the production and who first used what became the most popular pattern of all, Willow Ware. It was designed and was engraved by Thomas Minton.
The original design by Minton used a "fish roe" border, adjoining circles with a spot in the center of each (see here). Other borders are seen here, too, from an old book, "If Dishes Could Talk," Mary Jackson. The borders had significant meaning in Chinese but the English potters in copying them attempted to make them more realistic and natural which ultimately changed their symbolism, heavily used in the Orient.
Some references give that, for instance, an orange tree signified good luck, the willow tree, spring and femininity.
Thomas Minton had worked for Turner when the Willow design was made but four years later he was hired away by Spode at Stoke-on-Trent, one of the leading potteries in England. It is believed that it was there that the Willow pattern was first applied to earthenware, a less expensive material which could be bought by folks with less money than the porcelain people! It was then also that the Willow tree was first used in the pattern. Minton, as it turns out, designed, made copper plates for several manufacturers each varying somewhat piece to piece as will be found on close examination of the ware ... Numbers of fruits on trees, tree numbers, numbers of arches on the bridge, figures on the bridge, their placement, etc.
Minton ultimately went into business for himself, 1796, continuing to produce the Willow pattern so much in vogue for so many years. Transfer-printing and the Willow pattern were happy companions, emerging at the same time.
The first potteries using transfer-printing used a soft cobalt blue, the eighteenth century pieces light in weight carefully potted and printed ... "With the exception of the black prints made by Wedgewood, other colors were used such as indigo, shades of other blues, pink, red, purple which are of later manufacture. The large platter here is brown and has an odd grooved reverse (?) Many of the border and motif can be found in it. Value of pieces today are based on the scarcity of the pottery. At one time those pieces on which the colors have bled or flowed due to the volatile salts thrown into the kiln in the glazing process was once scorned but as years passed "Flow Blue" became highly collectible, too. (The bleeding or flowing could also be caused by the tissue slipping slightly in the transfer.)
There are other elements which determine value, the age read on the piece of Willow which can easily be found in your local library, online or from a knowledgeable collector. One thing so far unable to be definitely determined, however, is which came first, the Willow design or the poem telling the story thereon. Even the author is unknown.
