These simple, round salad plates represent one variant of Minton's "Aquarium" pattern, designed by William Coleman, one of Minton's premier artists of the aesthetic period.

Coleman here evokes an aquatic environment through simple but suggestive means. Two prints: a couple of very Japanese looking fish and a clump of water plants, have been placed--seemingly at random--on the blank surface. While randomness for its own sake is an important element in some of Coleman's other designs, here it may just evoke the topsy-turvey undersea world where one can lose one's sense of which way is up.

While many transfer patterns appealed to the aesthetic consumer by simply incorporating Japanese motifs, Coleman penetrates deeply into the Japanese mode of capturing nature in these aquatic studies. He defies the western tradition of nature depiction and china decoration, filling the plates with asymmetrical, spontaneous, unconventionally close-up views. The placement of the drawings on the plate is unprecedented in transferware. While "Aquarium" was produced in may variations, this blue version, with a hint of flow in the heavy printing, effectively conveys the quality of an Asian ink brush study.