The Blue Willow Pattern: A Tale of Romance, Bone and Clay
Suzanne takes Muriel on a journey to a faraway land, travelling into the hidden depths of a dinner plate. Its famous pattern – trees, a pagoda, a bridge, a boat, a fence – tells a version of Romeo and Juliet's story set in Imperial China. The plate was first made in England in the 18th century, but the story and its memorable characters – an eminent mandarin, his beautiful daughter, an ardent young man, a resourceful maid – were retrofitted to the plate as part of a story of cross-cultural admiration, imitation and adaptation that unfolded in Staffordshire in the 1780s. But how did Josiah…
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