Love Story on a Dinner Plate - sage

Valentine's Day Special


Love Story on a Dinner Plate

Two birds flying high,
A Chinese vessel, sailing by.
A bridge with three men, sometimes four,
A willow tree, hanging o'er.
A Chinese temple, there it stands,
Built upon the river sands.
An apple tree, with apples on,
A crooked fence to end my song.

In every antiques' sale (or most) one will find a number of blue and white dinner plates, chargers, meat-platters (what have you) with a somewhat familiar pattern in blue on white. A Chinese lanscape unfolds before one's eyes on every dinner plate: a Weeping Willow tree, two pagodas, a fence, a bridge with three little people running on it, a boat on a river and two kissing love-birds usually make up the scene. They tell a tragic tale of love which supposedly happened in long-ago China. The story goes like this ...

Years ago there lived a wealthy, Chinese Mandarin who had a daughter name Knoon-Se. Knoon-Se was brought up in a beautiful palace surrounded by lovely gardens filled with exotic plants, shrubs and trees. As time passed, Knoon-Se grew up into a beautiful, young woman and fell hopelssly in love with her father's, the Mandarin's, secretary - an intelligent young man who went by the name of Chang.

Chang and Knoon-Se met every day under a lovely Willow tree by the river which ran through the Mandarin's garden, and there their love flourished in secrecy. But after a while the father discovered what was going on, and in his anger that Knoon-Se had fallen in love with a commoner, he imprisoned the girl in a pavilion on his property, and sacked Chang, forbidding him from ever seeing his daughter again. He also built a high fence round the garden, to ensure that Chang was kept away, and allowed his daughter to walk in the garden, only as far as the water's edge.

Much to her horror, Knoon-Se was promised in marriage to an old duke. The marriage was to take place when the apple tree outside her window was in bloom. Chang, too, got to know of the coming nuptials. He was desperate to contact his beloved, so he fitted a shell with a sail and place a love poem and a bead given to him by his sweetheart in it, and placed it on the water where it floated right into Knoon-Se's garden. In the dead of night Knoon-Se answered Chang's poem and placed her note in the shell with a stick of burning incense. Her note read: Gather your blossom before it is stolen.

Some time after this, when the apple tree outside Knoon-Se's window was full of blooms, the man whom her father had chosen to be her husband came to visit and inspect his bride. He brought with him a  casket full of gold and jewels, just for her, but Knoon-Se was not interested. After the old duke presented her with the jewels and getting to, there were whole daysfull of great banquets and much feasting. Chang took the opportunity to enter the Mandarin's palace disguised as a servant and after one such feast, when the Mandarin and his noble friend were asleep, he found Knoon-Se and asked her to go with him to a boat, which he had prepared on the river and which was to take them to safety and freedom. Once Knoon-Se got to know of the plans, the lovers wasted no time: they quickly gathered the casket of jewels which the betrothed, old nobleman had given Knoon-Se and headed for the bridge which crossed the river, to the boat.

The Mandarin, who was sleeping off the excesses of days of feasting, somehow woke up and hearing noises, found out what was going on and immediately gave chase. The three little figures chasing each other across the bridge on every Willow Pattern dinner-plate are these: Knoon-Se holding the staff of virginity, Chang following right behind with the casket of jewels in his hands, and last of all, the Mandarin giving chase and trying desperately to retrieve his daughter. Some plates show four figures on the bridge, in which case the last figure is the old duke giving chase with the father and trying to fetch back his bride-to-be.

The couple did make it to the boat in the nick of time and they sailed away happily to a far land, and settled there. Their far-away pagoda is depicted on every Willow Pattern plate, across the river, far away surrounded by lush greenery, where the lovers found their refuge.

Years passed by, and Chang began to write. The Mandarin, still furious over the loss of his daughter, sent out spies to find out where Chang's lovely poems were originating from. He eventually discovered the hiding place of his daughter and her lover, and sent out an army to destroy their pagoda. The army did this, setting fire to Chang's and Knoon-Se's pagoda in the dead of night, whilst the couple were inside, sleeping.

The two perished that night, but it is said that the gods had mercy on these two young people and their young love, who had died such a cruel death in vain, and granted them immortality. Hence they live on as two love-birds, which we can see forever snatching kisses over the bridge on every Willow Pattern dinner plate ... whilst the Willow tree weeps at a story so sad.

 

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About Willow Pattern china: The pattern has been around for years on end. Its popularity waxes and wanes as fashions come and go, but the pattern seems to have stood the test of time and is popular even now. It was Thomas Minton who first engraved the pattern in 1780, and Minton (the china producers) which used it to produce items which consisted of a blue pattern on cream-coloured parian porcelain, earthenware maiolica and bone china. However Minton were closely followed by Royal Worcester, Spode, Adams, Wedgwood, Davenport, Clews, Leeds and Swansea in producing this pattern, each with their little, individual differences. The earliest Willow pattern did not have the kissing birds or the blossoming apple tree on it, neither did the original Chinese pattern which Minton copied have a bridge with three little people running across it. The legend is therefore, probably, thoroughly English rather than Chinese - but it is a lovely legend all the same.

Info sourced from the internet.