Blue Onion (Zwiebelmuster)

Drawn at Meissen around 1739 after Chinese underglaze-blue models, the 'onion' pattern actually depicts stylised pomegranates and peaches its painters had never seen ripe. The design's genius is systemic: a fixed grammar of border fruit, bamboo stalk, peony and chrysanthemum that survives any plate geometry.

Its two-century career of imitation — Bohemia, Thuringia, Japan, and notably the 'blue onion' of a dozen Soviet factories — makes attribution sport: the Meissen original hides a tiny crossed-swords mark woven into the bamboo stem from 1888 onward.