Osier pattern

[1] The name comes from Salix viminalis, or the common osier (ozier in German), a Eurasian species of willow, whose thin, flexible, shoots or withies were and are much used for various types of wickerwork, usually encouraged by coppicing the plants.

[2] Such relief backgrounds were a speciality of Meissen under Kändler, as in the "Dulong border" (from 1743) with a rather neoclassical plant-scroll pattern,[3] and, most spectacular of all, the decoration of the famous Swan Service, where each plate or other piece of flatware has a delicate background with radiating bands based on a scallop shell, against which there is in the central well a pair of swans on the water amid bullrushes, and a crane in the air, descending to join another on the left.

The inner and outer boundaries of the osier decoration may be marked by striated bands, also imitating woven basketwork.

[5] Not long after, a version was introduced with finer shoots, all going in the same direction parallel with the edge of the plate, and not always having the vertical strips, which as before are straight.

The central well of the plate is left plain, except in the new type, and many larger pieces that are not flat (cups, pots and tureens for example) lack the relief pattern.