Chasing the blues with Flow blue, Willow patterns, and Blue onions…
We’ve all experienced it, for sometimes recalling some good childhood memories can help make everything right, if only for a moment. The Proust moment, for example. Like when I decided that I needed a good cup of tea this afternoon, and getting out some familiar china seemed to be the perfect solution.
I can barely remember Isabelle. She was mostly a legend when I was growing up, as she died in the early 50s. Only the silhouette of the stately lady with her felt hat and ivory-handled, silk umbrella, approaching us against a brilliant sky as she entered our home one day comes to mind. But the legend was part of my life, and Mom still refers to her as her “favorite cousin.” Isabelle Cloudsley was a refined lady born in Scotland. She wisely married a diamond dealer from New York City, so you can figure out the rest. Mom inherited or was given many key objects that were part of the environment in our house as I grew up: there was a leather-bound set of Shakespeare’s complete works, the poems of Robert Burns, and a wonderful ancient encyclopedia where I spent many hours turning the pages in wonderment.
So as her favorite, Mom also inherited a unique three-diamond ring. The silver setting was intricate in detail, and the diamonds were cut in the ‘old-fashioned’ manner, the facets more detailed by today’s standard, to the surprise of many jewelers to whom it was shown. I said “was” because the ring suddenly disappeared a few years ago when Mom was losing her eyesight and newly-recruited aids were constantly entering and leaving her apartment. But there were also souvenirs from a trip to India (the footed rest for the teapot, shown in the picture); some shells from the seashore that made us dream of hearing the ocean in Upstate New York; a wonderful Japanese pitcher, shaped like a decanter; and some vintage crochet work from another time.
But not less impressive is the oversized oval “turkey platter,” in the famous blue and white Willow pattern, popular in England and the United States which we inherited and used annually for countless Thanksgiving gatherings of up to thirty hungry relatives. Twenty years ago, the platter was carefully wrapped for another overseas voyage, this time by air. Eccentric on my part perhaps, but I’m kind of sentimental. Like my mother, I was always fascinated by this deep blue in all its variations, the didactic stories in the pseudo-Japanese mythology (chinoiserie if you like), or the quaint English countryside views, or the blue onions in various Meissen pieces, and over the years and with my travels I have actively added to these pieces, to the point of overloading a large mahogany china cabinet in Paris.