Dinner Plate

In 1793 Thomas Minton established a pottery factory in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. He produced primarily domestic tableware. His most popular pattern was the blue and white transferware called Blue Willow. There is a fable that goes with the pattern. It tells of a wealthy Mandarin with a beautiful young daughter. He had betrothed his daughter to a powerful duke, but she had fallen in love with her father’s clerk. The day she was to marry the duke, the daughter and the clerk eloped with the duke’s dowry. The angry duke pursued them and burned the house where they were hiding. The gods felt sorry for the doomed couple and turned them into a pair of doves. There’s plenty of evidence that Thomas Minton fabricated this tale to sell more pottery. So what’s the moral? Never let the facts get in the way of a really good story.