Vintage Aynsley Scots Thistle Teacup And Saucer – Peach Ground, Scattered Sprigs, Hand Coloured, Gilt Rim, Bone China England 1940s

An Aynsley teacup and saucer in bone china, both laid in a soft peach ground with a ring of white left clear at the saucer's centre. Scots thistles are scattered across it, each a small magenta bud over a green head with saw-edged leaves either side. The cup flares at the rim and draws in at the waist, on a spreading foot.

The peach is a ground colour, laid over the fired body and fired again before any thistle went on — a kiln pass more than a white cup needs. It was brushed rather than printed: the edge where it stops at the saucer centre is clean, with a slight thickening, and no dot pattern in it.

The thistles are scattered rather than banded, and that costs more than it looks. A border follows one line round; scattered sprigs are placed one at a time across a curved surface, spaced so the eye reads them as random without finding a gap or a cluster. The colour was washed in by hand, so no two carry the same weight of purple.

The nineteen-thirties to the fifties. The green mark is the crown over a ribbon reading Aynsley, with Bone China England around it, and a pattern number written in by hand beneath. There is no Est 1775 line, which the factory began adding from the end of the thirties, so the earlier part of that span is likelier.

Aynsley of Longton. Not one thistle here is open; every one is caught in bud over its green head, which is how they are drawn on china — the open flower smudges at this size. The pattern went on a coloured ground far less often than on white, and it is the peach you see across a room, the thistles when you pick it up.