Vintage Coalport Bird of Paradise Teacup & Saucer – Broadway Rose Pink Sponged Border, Wide Mouth, Gilt Handle, Bone China, England 1950s

A Coalport Broadway teacup and saucer with a bird of paradise on the cup wall — a long-tailed bird in cobalt and violet blue, perched among pink clematis-like blossoms, yellow berries, and curling grey-green leaves on a warm ivory ground. The rims of both pieces carry the Broadway series' signature border: a band of rose pink applied by sponging, so the colour drifts cloud-like from deep raspberry to pale blush as it follows the wavy edge.

That sponged band is what separates this series from an ordinary colour border. Held to the light, the pink breaks into a fine mottled texture — laid on with a sponge rather than a brush, no two rims shading quite the same way. Inside the cup a small bouquet of pink and violet flowers waits at the bottom of the bowl; the saucer well repeats it, ringed by three little sprigs of yellow berries. The shape is Broadway's wide-mouthed, low-slung profile with a neat squared handle in full gilt.

The underside carries Coalport's teal crown mark — Made in England, Coalport, A.D. 1750 — the stamp used from roughly 1939 to 1959. The 1750 date is the firm's old founding claim; the pottery John Rose actually built in the Ironbridge Gorge dates to 1795, and the brand ran until 2009, so every Coalport piece is now a closed book. The Broadway design is documented in several colourways — the deep-red Marone, a green, a blue — and this rose-pink version turns up less often than its darker sisters.

A cup for the Coalport and bird-pattern collector, for the pink grandmillennial shelf, or a companion to the gold Cairo bird already in this shop — the two make a quiet pair of Coalport aviaries.