what does a blue blurred mark mean?

A blurred blue mark often indicates a flow blue piece. The makers added lime or ammonia to the kiln during firing to make the cobalt run. This masked minor printing errors and gave the pattern a softer edge. Sometimes the mark blurs simply because the printer applied too much wet ink. You find this on cheaper domestic wares where speed mattered more than precision.

why are old plates small?

Dinner plates from the nineteenth century usually measure an inch smaller than modern ones. People ate different portion sizes back then. Shrinkage in the kiln also affected the final size.

My grandmother gave me a large meat platter with a willow pattern on it and I was wondering why they put those little channels and a well at one end?

Those channels manage meat juices. The carver pressed the joint of beef or mutton on the flat section, and the hot fat ran down the grooves into the deep well at the end. Servants then used a ladle to scoop up the collected juices. They poured this liquid back over the sliced meat or used it to make gravy in the kitchen.

I keep seeing blue and white ginger jars with metal bands around the rims at antique fairs and I don't really understand what the metal is actually there for?

The metal mounts hide damage. Owners rarely threw away a good piece of imported Chinese porcelain just because the rim suffered a chip. They took it to a brass worker to have a neat collar fitted over the broken edge. This repair technique kept the jar functional. It shows how much people valued blue and white ceramics before mass production made them cheaper to replace.

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Antiques Blue and White

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Blue and white ceramics span centuries of global trade, combining cobalt oxide with pale clay to produce everything from everyday dinnerwares to heavy display jars.