Object lesson: Blue Plate Special
Plate in the Willow pattern attributed to Josiah Spode (1733–1797), made by the Spode pottery, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, 1818. Inscribed “Thomasine Willey/ 1818” at center. Transfer-printed earthenware; diameter 8 ¾ inches. Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on- Trent, Staffordshire, gift of the Art Fund. On the right-hand side of the dinner plate is a grand Chinese house that, as the legend goes, belonged to Ta-Jin, a man of immense wealth and political power. One day, a youth named Chang came to conduct business, and, upon seeing the man’s daughter, Koong-See, fell instantly in love. She felt the same, but her father forbade the two from meeting. Over time, Ta-Jin erected higher and higher barriers to keep the two apart, literally rebuilding his home to thwart his daughter’s escape. When Chang finally found a way to set Koong-See free, he took immediate action, and the lovers’ flight is illustrated on the plate by figures on a bridge, rushing to a new life. Tragically, their freedom was short-lived. Chang was killed in retribution for orchestrating the escape, and Koong-See committed suicide, killing herself rather than be forced to marry another man. “In pity to Koong-See and her lover,” noted an article in The Family Friend in 1849, a British periodical of the time, the gods transformed the pair “into two immortal doves, emblems of the constancy which had rendered them beautiful in life, and in death undivided.” Dish in the Willow pattern, Spode, c. 1790– 1800. Transfer-printed earthenware; diameter 10 1/2 inches. Photograph courtesy of the Zeller Collection. It is a well-worn tale of star-crossed lovers that transcends time and cultures. It is also utter tripe. The legend is a nineteenth-century fiction cooked up to sell the Willow pattern, a classic chinoiserie transfer-ware design first produced in the 1790s in the Staffordshire
