Miss Barry’s willow-ware platter

Miss Barry’s willow-ware platter is a borrowed dish whose fragility becomes the center of a chain of mishaps and a long replacement hunt. Valued at twenty dollars and lent to Anne Shirley for a bazaar, it is first protected with painstaking care, then accidentally broken at Green Gables. Anne’s effort to replace it leads her and Diana Barry along the dusty Tory Road, where finding another platter brings both comic danger and an unexpected glimpse into Miss Sarah Copp’s life.

Identity and history

Anne obtained the platter after promising Mrs. Lynde she would arrange to borrow one. Miss Barry, an old friend of Anne in Charlottetown, sent it with a letter stressing that she had paid twenty dollars for it and urging Anne to handle it carefully. It served its purpose at the Aid bazaar, after which Anne returned it to the closet at Green Gables. She would trust no one but herself to take it back to town, a detail that establishes the care and responsibility she attaches to the object before it is lost.

The platter is more than a serving dish in the household: its known price makes its value concrete, while Anne’s personal responsibility for borrowing and returning it gives the object an additional weight. Once back at Green Gables, it is brought out for visitors to examine and admire. In that brief display it remains an admired possession, apparently safe in Anne’s hands; the sudden domestic interruption that follows turns this security into a liability.

The break at Green Gables

As Anne carries the platter back inside, a crash in the pantry sends her, Marilla Cuthbert, and Diana rushing to investigate. They find Davy Keith amid the remains of two lemon pies, having slipped while reaching for balls of twine on a high shelf. In the ensuing confusion, Anne sets the platter on the second stair and forgets it. When its fragments are gathered, she accepts responsibility for having put it there and lost track of it. Her response is not to blame Davy, even as she anxiously wonders what Miss Barry will say.

The break changes the platter from a useful, admired object into evidence of a mistake that cannot be undone. Anne’s distress is sharpened by the circumstances: the dish was borrowed, its price was known, and she had taken special care to return it herself. Diana tries to console her by pointing out that the platter was purchased rather than an heirloom, but that distinction does not remove Anne’s sense of accountability. The guests leave soon afterward, and Anne and Diana wash the dishes in unusually subdued silence. The broken platter continues to shape Anne’s thoughts after the immediate commotion has passed.

The search for a replacement

Diana soon brings news that the old Copp sisters on the Tory Road may have a willow-ware platter like the one broken at supper. Anne resolves to go to Spencervale the next day with Diana, hoping to find a substitute before she must go to town. She is unsure whether the Copp platter will match, and fears that delaying could leave no time to try another possibility at Wesley Keyson’s. The search is therefore not simply a purchase: Anne needs an object close enough to the original to face the person who lent it.

The girls travel ten miles in hot, windless weather after six weeks of dry conditions. When they reach the Copp house, no one is home. Diana guesses that a small window belongs to the pantry and proposes climbing onto the roof of an old duck house to look inside. Anne hesitates because the structure seems shaky, but, leaning on the window sill, she spots exactly the sort of willow-ware platter they have come to find. In her delight she stops leaning, gives a small hop, and crashes through the roof up to her armpits. The replacement they sought is visible just beyond the window, while Anne is stuck in the structure and cannot free herself.

Replacement and significance

Miss Sarah Copp returns, hears Diana’s explanation, and uses an axe to release Anne. Anne earnestly explains that she looked through the window only to identify the platter and did not inspect anything else. Miss Copp is untroubled: she says the pantry is kept presentable and that she is glad the old duck house has been smashed, since she hopes its destruction will persuade her sister Martha to have it removed. The broken roof thus has a consequence beyond Anne’s predicament, while the platter search brings the girls into the household and its concerns.

At first Anne offers twenty dollars for the platter. Miss Copp says it is worth twenty-five, and although Diana discreetly signals that Anne might hold out, Anne agrees at once rather than risk losing the replacement. She leaves with the platter carefully balanced on her lap as Diana drives them away. The original dish had been entrusted to Anne and broken through a lapse of attention; the substitute is secured by a deliberate, costly choice and carried home with renewed care. Across the episode, the platter makes responsibility tangible: its break exposes Anne’s vulnerability to accident, while the search shows how seriously she takes repairing the consequence.