Legacy and Continuity: Willow Pattern Ceramics and Stories of ‘Other’

In 2025, Stoke-on-Trent City Council marked the centenary of the City’s status, conferred by King George V, through a year-long programme of cultural events. Among these, the exhibition Willow Pattern Ceramics and Stories of ‘Other’ was commissioned to critically reframe understandings of one of North Staffordshire’s most iconic and globally disseminated ceramic designs.

Curated by Professors Neil Brownsword (University of Staffordshire) and Tiejun Hou (Jingdezhen Ceramic University), the exhibition brought together objects from regional museum collections and private holdings to interrogate the complex and often paradoxical entanglements of Chinese ceramic traditions and British industrial production.

Through a series of scholarly interventions, the exhibition examined the cultural and literary symbolism of the willow motif within Chinese visual culture; the processes of imitation, translation, and stylistic adaptation by which Chinese export porcelain informed the emergence of the Willow Pattern in Britain. It also considered the design’s subsequent re-circulation to China through late twentieth-century outsourcing practices undertaken by British manufacturers. In parallel, contemporary artworks extended these historical inquiries by critically engaging with themes of cultural appropriation, globalisation, and artistic reinvention, thereby situating the Willow Pattern within a transhistorical and transcultural framework spanning three centuries.

In conjunction with the exhibition, scholars from China and the United Kingdom were invited to develop these themes further through the international symposium Legacy and Continuity, held at Stoke Town Hall on 21–22 November 2025. The essays gathered in this publication both reflect and extend the contributions presented at that event.

Together, the symposium and exhibition mark a significant moment in recognising the shared ceramic heritage of two historic centres of global production: Stoke-on-Trent and Jingdezhen. This collaboration was formalised through a Cultural Concordat signed between Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Jingdezhen City Government, Jingdezhen Ceramic University, and the University of Staffordshire. The Concordat establishes a framework for sustained dialogue, research exchange, and cultural activity, foregrounding ceramics as both a material inheritance and a strategic medium for contemporary engagement.

Central to this initiative is the positioning of Stoke-on-Trent and Jingdezhen not as discrete or hierarchically ordered sites, but as mutually constitutive centres shaped by long histories of technological exchange, artistic innovation, and global trade. By situating the symposium and exhibition within this framework, the publication mobilises shared heritage as a critical lens through which to interrogate broader questions of cultural transmission, authorship, and the enduring legacies of exchange.