Blue Willow in the Clouds: The Architectural Reuse of Willow Ware in 19th-Century India

Thursday September 17, 2026
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm ET
Online via Zoom

Part of the Gardiner Signature Lecture Series
The Robert and Marian Cumming Lecture

Speaker: Heeryoon Shin, Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Bard College

The popular Willow pattern seen on Staffordshire transferware found a new life as ornamentation in palace interiors in 19th-century India. Set into walls in their original form or broken into flat, rectilinear pieces, Blue Willow plates and their luminous blue-and-white surface effectively framed gods and kings, creating a multisensory space.

Taking the late 19th-century sites of Juna Mahal in Dungarpur and Junagadh Fort in Bikaner as points of departure, this online talk will explore how the design and materiality of Willow ware and its display acquired new meaning and purpose in Indian palaces.

Evoking the tradition of tiled ornamentation and the display of ceramics in the chini khana (“China room”) in India, while also referencing European porcelain rooms, the transferware-covered walls reveal the complex cultural negotiations and material and political aspirations of 19th-century India. By examining the Indian reuse of Willow ware, which has been largely studied in terms of Western responses to Chinese export porcelain, this talk complicates the conventional narrative of West looking East and instead highlights the nonlinear and multidirectional flows of ceramic culture.

About the Speaker

Heeryoon Shin is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College. Her current book project explores architectural revival, mobility, and cross-cultural exchange in eighteenth-century India through the lens of temple architecture in the pilgrimage city of Banaras. She is also developing a second project on the global circulation of blue-and-white ceramics and their interaction with local production and use in South Asia.