Antique Edward Prince of Wales Investiture Mug – Caernarvon Castle, Naval Portrait, Ich Dien Feathers, Royal Commemorative England, 1911

The boy in the naval cadet's uniform on this mug is seventeen. Twenty-five years later he would give up an empire for Wallis Simpson — but on 13 July 1911, at Caernarvon Castle, his father George V placed the coronet of the Prince of Wales on his head, and this mug was made to remember it.

The ceremony was not as old as it looked. No Prince of Wales had been publicly invested since 1616; for two centuries the thing had been done privately, and never in Wales. The 1911 revival was the work of David Lloyd George — MP for Caernarvon Boroughs and, conveniently, Constable of Caernarfon Castle — who staged it in his own constituency as an act of political courtship. The regalia was made with Welsh gold and carried the Welsh dragon; and Lloyd George personally coached the English prince to address the crowd in Welsh: "Môr o gân yw Cymru i gyd" — all Wales is a sea of song. They went wild for him.

The design carries the full apparatus: the sepia portrait ringed by the Garter motto, the Prince of Wales's three feathers and ICH DIEN above (German, oddly enough — taken, tradition says, from the King of Bohemia's arms at Crécy in 1346), crossed flags, laurel and small shields, and the whole story spelled out on the ribbon below.

The base is unmarked, as cheap souvenirs of 1911 often were — but the date is printed on the face and that day happened once. Honest wear is disclosed below: this mug has been kept for 115 years and shows it.

This shop now holds his whole arc: this investiture mug, the 1936 accession plate, the Grafton mug for the coronation that never came, and the Empire plate for the brother who took his place.