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The Blue Onion pattern paints stylized peonies, asters and pomegranates in cobalt blue on white Meissen porcelain. Meissen, the legendary German house and Europe's first porcelain maker, developed it around 1739. Read its story.
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Blue Onion lives on the hard white porcelain that Europe first learned to make at Meissen. Its blue is hand-painted under the glaze, where it keeps its depth. The result reads like ink on fresh snow, a single cobalt carrying the whole design.
Blue Onion is credited to Johann Gregor Herold, who probably took a Kangxi-era bowl from China as his model. Despite the name, no onion appears anywhere; the misnomer came from the way Asian fruit forms were read once the design reached Europe.
These salad plates were made in the mid-twentieth century and move easily from a luncheon course to dessert or a weekend breakfast. Wherever they land, the stylized blooms look luminous against the white porcelain, a garden that keeps its poise at any hour.
Meissen was born of an alchemist's promise. Johann Friedrich Boettger claimed he could make gold, and Augustus the Strong kept him in protective custody to do it. In Albrechtsburg castle at Meissen, near Dresden, Boettger and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus found something finer. They made the first hard-paste porcelain in Europe.
Augustus founded Meissen as the first porcelain manufactory in Europe. For his Japanese Palace he ordered a great menagerie of animal figures. Count Heinrich von Bruehl commissioned the Swan Service. The legendary house took its crossed swords mark from the arms of Saxony, and around 1739 it created the Blue Onion pattern, likely drawn from a Chinese bowl.
By its own account, Meissen porcelain has always been made only on the manufactory grounds in Meissen, and the Free State of Saxony is its sole owner. Its porcelain now lives in homes around the world, chosen by collectors who know where European porcelain began. They know each piece carries the crossed swords of a king's own manufactory.
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