The little bit of history Phil found in his garden …………..

I grew up with those plates, cups and saucers which came with blue decorative designs.

Found by Phil, 2023

Sometimes the blue extended to the entire plate and depending on the design you might also get leaves, and flowers, a group of fishermen with their rods, and in the distance little flimsy bridges, and the odd pagoda.

So common were they in our house, our Nana’s house and in the homes of neighbours that they were just the background to our lives.

Back then I can’t say I liked them, but I was  curios at the number of fragments which turned up in the garden of the old house.

26 Lausanne Road in Peckham had been built in the 1870s and by the time I was growing up there eighty or, so years later there were lots of these bits buried just below the surface.

And a decade later in the 1960s they could also be found in the garden of the house in Well Hall Road which dated from 1915.

All of which might have suggested to me that these “blue” ceramics had a long history and had been mass produced throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries.

The posh stuff circa 1800, 2016

But at 10 rolling through into my teenage years fragments of China didn’t feature.

Now I am intrigued which made Phil’s question about his bit of blue plate one to follow up.

Along with a picture he commented, “Our back yard now has a trench.... for the new drain. 

The trench diggers today found this and left it somewhere prominent. What could it be and how old? 

Our house was built 1880 Kenilworth Avenue off Burton Rd, West Didsbury. 

The fragment is 10 cm long, 

It could be part of a wash basin or tureen?”

And I was fascinated.  

There will be possible answers on the net, which Phil will follow up along with a query to the Art Gallery in town. As for the two pictures I am well aware of the differences, but blue China is Blue China.

So watch this space.

Location; Didsbury

Picture; a bit of blue China, lost but found, broken but clean, 2023. Courtesy of Phil Portus, and posh stuff, Blue Willow china, c. late 1800s, various manufactures, Lahaina Heritage Museum, 2016, Author Wmpearl, Licensing, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:Creative Commons CC-Zero This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

*Willow pattern, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_pattern 

and

Blue Printed Earthenware In The 19th Century, http://printedbritishpotteryandporcelain.com/pottery/ceramics/blue-printed-earthenware-19th-century