Mason's ironstone — the durable, opaque earthenware patented by Charles James Mason in 1813, decorated in Oriental-influenced patterns — appears in poems about Regency and early Victorian domestic life as a robust alternative to fragile porcelain; A poem about a middle-class household's ambition might describe Mason's ironstone: "not porcelain, not pretending to be — but painted with the same dragons and prunus as any mandarin's table, and considerably less likely to break"; The scale of Mason's ironstone — it was made in large services including enormous tureens — gives it a presence in poems that delicate china lacks: "the soup tureen so large it required two to lift it, the pattern so dense it required two to read it"; In a poem about an English country kitchen, Mason's ironstone is the workaday service for the servants' hall while the porcelain stayed in the dining room; The "ironstone" of Mason's patent — the name suggesting durability rather than beauty — offers poets an irony: something called iron, painted with silk pavilions and cherry blossom; A poem about an antiques market might describe a Mason's ironstone jug: "the handle has been repaired, the dragon's tail has lost its tip — but the blue persists, as the ironstone always persists."