Vintage Channel Tunnel Mug – Numbered Limited Edition 204 of 1000, Queen Elizabeth II & Mitterrand, Bilingual Anglo French Bone China 1994

Two languages run round this mug, one beneath the other — To Commemorate The Completion Of The Building Of The Channel Tunnel, and Pour Célébrer L'Achèvement De La Construction Du Tunnel Sous La Manche. English fine bone china, made for the opening in 1994.

British royal commemoratives run to thousands of coronations, weddings and jubilees; very few make room for another country. This one happily does. The British royal arms stand on one side with the crowned lion holding the Union flag, the French shield with the tricolour and the Gallic cockerel opposite, and set into each, in an oval, the two heads of state who opened the tunnel between them — Queen Elizabeth II and President François Mitterrand. Between them sits a gold cartouche reading 1988 / 1994, the years of boring and of opening, with a seahorse on either side — a lovely detail, the creature having stood for the sea and for crossings since Neptune's chariot, hinting at what lies above the tunnel: thirty-eight kilometres of water.

The base gives the maker as J & S Chown of Hayle in Cornwall and records the run: in a limited edition of 1000, this is no. 204 — numbered piece by piece rather than merely called limited.

Engineering commemoratives are their own small collecting field, a little apart from royal china, drawing railway and infrastructure enthusiasts too. This one sits comfortably in both, being at once a Queen Elizabeth piece and a Channel Tunnel piece, made at the time rather than in retrospect. A thousand was never a large edition, and examples still carrying their number are the ones collectors watch for. Thirty years on it still does what it was made to do — a small piece of English china that made room for France.