In aesthetic transferware, the combination of brown transfer on an ivory body is the most basic and probably most popular of all the combinations available.  Ridgway, Sparks and Ridgway make masterful use of this combination in their "Yeddo" pattern.  This cake plate, with handles molded  into the body, would have found use on the everyday tea or breakfast table for sandwiches, sweets, etc.  The center vignette features two oriental men engaged in corralling a large and friendly looking turtle.  (We hope this bodes well for the turtle).

 Although the border filling most of the surface has the appearance of being casually dashed off, it is as important as the center view.  In a combination of  traditional Chinese objects, circular crests alternate with two groups of scrolls  one accompanied by a sacred vessel and the other with their special protective boxes -- all exotic, mysterious and thrilling to Western eyes.    

We tend to look at aesthetic transferware in a Japanese context. However, "Yeddo" demonstrates that things were not quite so clear cut in the period. While this pattern is executed in the favored ivory body/brown transfer combination of the period, in concept it finds its roots in the chinoiserie patterns of Spode and others -- or even the export wares of fifty to eighty years previous. (The turtle vignette, however, can be traced quite directly to Japanese precedents.)