Vintage Aynsley Prince of Wales Investiture Mug – Full Succession Roll Since 1301, Caernarfon Castle, Ich Dien, Fine English Bone China 1969

Aynsley made this for the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969 — fine English bone china, the royal arms in full colour on one side, the title ribbon running below the rim.

On the reverse is something most commemoratives never attempt — a printed roll of every Prince of Wales since 1301. It begins with Edward, created the year after the conquest of Wales, and runs six and a half centuries down to Charles (created 1958). Read down the column and it quietly becomes a different sort of list: Edward 1343, the Black Prince, who died before his father; Arthur 1489, Henry VIII's elder brother, dead at fifteen; Frederick 1729, who predeceased George II; Edward 1471, one of the princes lost in the Tower. A roll of heirs turns out to be a roll of those who never reached the throne. Above it stand the three ostrich feathers and the motto Ich Dien, the Prince's own badge, not the sovereign's.

The occasion has two dates and the mug carries both. Charles was created Prince of Wales in 1958, the year the list records; the ceremony that gave him the coronet was held at Caernarfon Castle on 1 July 1969, televised to millions. The mug marks the ceremony, the list the title.

Aynsley, founded in 1775 and one of the older bone china houses in Longton, made a great deal of royal commemorative ware, though pieces carrying a printed genealogy are less common — which gives this one a second audience among collectors of the succession itself rather than of a single royal figure. Six hundred and sixty-eight years of the title, printed on the back of something small enough to hold in one hand.