The joy of willow-pattern ceramics
From our UK edition
My granny used Spode willow-pattern crockery for everyday use. There was another grander service for Sunday lunch, also blue-and-white chinoiserie: Booths dragon, picked out with a gold border. Willow pattern evokes for me the taste of slightly stale ginger biscuits, which I liked very much, and coronation chicken, which I was less keen on. The idea of owning a table service now seems close to antediluvian; too formal and too much washing-up, although this was a ritual that mattered greatly to Granny. People now prefer plates that give a dull clunk when flicked, rather than fine china’s dulcet ping. Such changes of fashion were a factor in the 2008 closure of the Spode factory in Stoke-on-Trent, which had been producing willow-pattern plates since the 1790s.
