Blue Willow English Ceramic Tile Trivet, Sussex English Tiles for R. L. Mueller & Co. Pasadena, Dated October 1974

The Piece

A crisp square ceramic tile printed in cobalt on a warm ivory ground, carrying the Willow pattern in a circular reserve. Everything the pattern is famous for is here: the great pagoda beneath its spreading roof, the willow bending over the water, the three-arch bridge with two small figures crossing it, the boat drifting toward an island, and the orange tree and fence closing the composition. The corners are filled with a geometric fret and honeycomb diaper broken by four floral roundels — the classic Willow border, squared to fit a tile.

The reverse is faced in cobalt blue felt, so it sits on a table without scratching, and it carries two labels. One is the importer's: Sussex English Tiles, Imported By R. L. Mueller & Co., Pasadena, Calif. 91102. The other is a strip of aged masking tape inscribed by hand in pencil with two names and a date — Oct. 28, 1974.

History & Provenance

The Willow pattern is the most reproduced ceramic design in history, and it is entirely English. Around 1780 Staffordshire engravers — Thomas Minton is usually credited — assembled a chinoiserie landscape from motifs found on imported Chinese export porcelain and printed it in underglaze blue by transfer. The design was never Chinese. Nor was the legend that grew up around it: the tale of the mandarin's daughter, her lover, the flight across the bridge, and the two doves the gods made of them was invented in England in the nineteenth century to sell the plates. It worked. Nearly every English pottery made a Willow, and it has been in continuous production for well over two centuries.

This tile is a twentieth-century continuation of that tradition — English-made, sold in the United States through R. L. Mueller & Co. of Pasadena, and finished with felt for use as a trivet.

Its best feature is the tape. Someone wrote two names and October 28, 1974 on the back and stuck it there — almost certainly the record of a gift. That inscription is more than fifty years old now, and it converts an anonymous decorative tile into something with a date and a story attached. Original importer's labels rarely survive on tiles like this. Both surviving together is genuinely uncommon.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A felt-backed tile is the most useful small thing in a kitchen. Put it under a teapot, a hot casserole, a coffee press, or a candle and it protects the table without a moment's thought. It also works as a spoon rest by the stove, a soap dish at a sink, or a catch-all for keys and rings by a door.

And it displays. Stood on a small easel or a plate rail, or hung in a run of three, Willow tiles look far more expensive than they are — that cobalt-on-ivory palette is the single most reliable decorative combination in existence, and it drops straight into a blue-and-white kitchen alongside ginger jars, transferware, and ironstone. Being the pattern it is, everyone who sees it recognizes it and nobody ever tires of it.