Surely you ever ate some chilaquiles or drank a coffee in the traditional sanborns tableware. But do you know the story they represent? Here we tell you.
The typical white tableware with blue details was inspired by English design Blue Willow. This design became popular in the late 18th century among porcelain manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent, a town in Staffordshire, England.
The pictographs applied to this type of porcelain were inspired by various elements or symbols from Chinese mythology.
Chinese legend of two lovers
In the dishes of the Sanborns restaurants depicts the legend of two lovers, Koong-Se and Chang.
Koong-Se was the daughter of a Mandarin millionaire, who had remarkable beauty. She fell in love with Chang, a humble accounting assistant to Koong-Se’s father.
However, this caused the displeasure of the Mandarin millionaire, who immediately fired Chang and forbade him, by building a wall, to see his beloved again.
Subsequently, the mandarin planned for his daughter to marry a powerful duke, who arrived on a ship to claim the bride. He brought with him a box full of jewels to give as a gift to the young Koong-Se.
However, the wedding between the duke and the mandarin’s daughter would be consummated until the willow dropped its last flower.
The escape
On the eve of the wedding, Chang disguised himself as a servant to enter the palace where his beloved lived. After going undetected he met up with Koong-Se. They took the jewels and both fled.
During the escape of the lovers, the palace guards and the young woman’s father were alarmed. This triggered a manhunt. But the lovers were not captured and managed to escape on the duke’s ship.
After sailing for a while, the lovers settled on a remote island. That would be the place where both of them could live in peace.
However, that would not last long, and years later the duke discovered the island where Chang and Koong-Se took refuge. The soldiers under the duke’s command captured the lovers, who as punishment for their actions were cremated.
Despite the tragic end, the gods were moved by the love between the two young people, so they decided to transform them into a pair of doves so that their romance would transcend.
Sanborns tableware
This story from the Far East was the one that inspired the tableware in which we sip coffee in the Sanborns restaurants in Mexico.
The Blue Willow style arrived in our country thanks to the exports that come from the old Continent. In the 1920s, the Sanborn brothers opened their café in the Casa de los Azulejos, in the Historic Center of Mexico City..
During that time it coincided with the creation in our porcelain factory “El Anfora”, with whom the Sanborn brothers decided to reproduce the tableware that represented this story. Subsequently, various versions of tableware were generated that tell other stories, including events of the national soul.