An introduction to Blue Willow China

hello folks its Rebecca here at Rebecca's retro back with another Friday findings video this week I'm going to talk about blue willow China or pottery it's called it goes by both names China or pottery it's one of the most enduring China patterns in the Western world Blue Willow was first introduced in England in the late 1700s and you can still pick up new blue willow patterns in lots of different stores and in fact I've seen it on paper plates in plastic cups so it continues to be a very popular pattern but I'm going to show you bluella pieces that were mainly made in the 1920s and 30s maybe in into the 40s I'm still trying to date all of these different pieces that I have the reason why I'm showing you blue willow is on my last trip to Harris auction my hometown source of all things vintage a couple weeks ago there was a huge lot of blue willow now I was bidding against a couple of other very determined shoppers and so I only got about a third or maybe a little more of the blue willow I probably could have gotten it all if I would have really tried but I thought I better leave well enough alone and so I went the other shoppers get some of these beautiful dishes but when I got home and sort of do it all and picked out the pieces that had chips and some discoloration I still had more than 70 pieces so I've been hard at work getting these beautiful dishes into my store and so I'm happy to share them with you here today now what is Blue Willow as I mentioned it was introduced in the late 1700s in England which is interesting because it has a Chinese theme to it it's what's called Chinua Z and this was a very popular theme in decorating in the 17 and 1800's in Europe it brought Chinese themes and gave a of a European twist the there are some distinctive features of Blue Willow and I have a little cheat sheet here that I'm using so I can get these right as I'm showing you one of these is a willow tree which is right there a Chinese pagoda or tea house and behind it is a tree with these kind of round features on it it's sometimes called an orange tree or you'll also see it referred to as an apple tree there's a bridge with three men walking across it or three figures it might be women we're not quite sure there's also this zigzag fence down here at the bottom of the design there's a boat and usually there's a figure in the boat and then there's another tea house up here with a pine tree behind it and then there are always two birds in flight so those are the basic motif of blue elo and you'll see those in with slight variations on most blue Ella patterns they also have an outside rim of a geometric pattern and then the English and American and a lot of other European countries would have this inner band of geometric design as well and that's one of the things that kind of separates British or English American from Japanese because the Japanese pieces tend not to have that inner geometric band now as soon as I said that then I came across a Japanese pattern with man this is from some of them that I got last week here's the mark back here and it said made in Japan but by enlarged pieces that were made in Japan did not have that inner band on it here's the fun fact couple fun facts about well-aware you've heard perhaps of the Blue Plate special that was a feature in American diners and restaurants in the 1920s and 30s well conventional wisdom is that that name comes from those divided plates that you might have seen in some old collectibles I wish I had one here to show you that I don't but they were frequently in the Blue Willow pattern and so they became known as the Blue Plate special another fun fact is that if you watch old episodes of it Andy Griffith Show aunt bee had blue willow so you would have seen that on the place on the tables that would have been the dishes well I want to show you some different patterns but one of the things that makes collecting Blue Willow or trying to figure out the date of the Blue Willow that you find so difficult is that over 400 English and Japanese companies produced a Blue Willow pattern over this long time frame that bluella has been produced and then when we add in American and European companies there's more than 500 different marks or pad companies that produce blue L o so that can make up really a challenge to figure out when was this particular piece that you're looking at produce there are books that can help you with that and online searching is also very helpful but it is very time-consuming but you know I don't think it really matters unless you're really one of those picky collectors who wants to get all of one pattern or all of one era they go together so beautifully and there's so much fun and I say just go for it but let me show you some of the pieces that I have here now one of the things that's interesting and it makes dating your particular piece of Blue Willow a challenge is that even if you see the mark of a particular company that mark can change over time so for example here's one by an English company called W Ridgeway so there's one mark and then here we see another one of their marks and you can see that has a bow and arrow with it in fact most of the Ridgeway pieces that I've seen have that but there you can see the blue willow pattern now and the blue Ella pattern and that I have no idea which of these is older I have not been able to find this particular Ridgeway mark no matter how much I've look maybe somebody out there will be able to send me a message and let me know something about it but there you see some of the challenge but that's okay it doesn't really matter let me show you some Japanese most of the Japanese well aware just says the word Japan on the back or made in Japan although there are particular marks here's one that made in Japan and a particular company to keep doing this so you can see the birds up there on the top the first American company to make Blue Willow was the Buffalo China Company and you'll see their mark on there this was a very early Buffalo China mark it doesn't have the Buffalo or the bison in it like a lot of the Buffalo China marks very pretty and very sturdy I really like Buffalo China blue willow I actually like it also but it's nice to see one that was made in the good old USA here is an English cup and saucer so you see that this one didn't really identify the pottery company or the China Company it simply says Made in England there you see the cup very nice and then I also have a Japanese Japan made in Japan cup and saucer again very pretty one of the another fun fact here is get these two pieces the birds on are different on the Japanese and the English English birds are much thinner the Japanese birds are plumper just another one of those funny distinguishing marks between Japanese English blue well oh it is possible to collect a whole huge set I mean they made every kind of piece serving pieces you know so you can get a lot of blue willow but you don't have to stick to just blue willow because it goes beautifully with other blue transferware patterns for example here we have the Old English Castle pattern and let me put this blue willow right up there beside it look how pretty that looks together you don't have to worry about getting everything the same the nice thing about blue transferware which blue willow is an example of blue transferware not all blue transfer where is Blue Willow but all blue willow is transferware and I did a video on transferware so if you're interested in that you can go back in and look at an earlier video here is a pretty old English countryside blue will or blue transfer where picture and then look at that with the teacup isn't that pretty they go together nicely well there you have it blue willow my Pick of the Week because that's what I've been working with mainly this week and I encourage you to go out look for it yourself or if you don't want to run around looking for it at yard sales thrift shops antique stores you can find a growing and beautiful selection a bluella right here at Rebecca's retro so that's it for this week and I look forward to seeing you back here again next week at Rebecca sweat retro Friday fines video or in-between at my store Rebecca's retro at Etsy calm have a great week and enjoy some pretty dishes maybe even blue willow bye

Channel: Rebekah's Retro's Friday Vintage Finds

Views: 23,626

Keywords: Blue Willow, collecting Blue Willow, determining date of Blue Willow, vintage Blue Willow, Blue Willow china, Blue Willow pottery

Id: PgwLy_NiY8s

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019