Antique Coalport Cobalt Blue Demitasse Cup – Raised Gold Beading, Full Gilt Interior, Coffee Can Shape, Bone China, England c. 1900

A small cobalt coffee can — straight-sided, flat-based, with a gold scroll handle and an interior gilded from rim to floor. Below the rim runs a band of raised gold beads, each cluster of four set around a fifth, with slender gold points dropping between them. It stands about the height of a thumb. Sold as the cup alone; there is no saucer with it.

The beading is the reason this cup exists. Each bead was placed by hand in thickened gold paste, fired, then burnished — you can feel every one under a fingertip, and no two clusters sit at quite the same interval. Work of this kind was slow and prone to loss in the kiln, which is why it appears on cabinet pieces rather than everyday china. The cobalt is not flat either: tip the cup toward the light and fine vertical brush strokes show where the colour was laid on by hand. The handle was gilded solid, with only a thread of blue along its inner edge, and the interior carries an unbroken wash of gold.

Circa 1891–1920. The green crown mark reads COALPORT over "A.D. 1750" with ENGLAND above — and it is the single word ENGLAND that dates it, appearing on British export wares after the 1891 American tariff act and giving way to "Made in England" from the 1920s. The pattern number 7142 is written in by hand, not printed.

Shropshire, on the bank of the Severn. The "A.D. 1750" in the mark is Victorian salesmanship rather than a founding date — John Rose established the Coalport works around 1795, and the earlier year was borrowed to claim descent from the neighbouring Caughley pottery. The form is older still: straight-sided cans belong to the late eighteenth century, when coffee was drunk from cans and tea from bowls.