Vintage Empire England Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Mug – Large Footed Tankard, Garter Portrait, National Flowers, Gilt Scroll Handle 1953

This is a big mug. At three and a half inches, with a moulded foot and a scrolled leaf handle gilded at its joins, it stands a good half-inch above the small coronation mugs councils handed out to schoolchildren in 1953 — a piece made for an adult hand and for a shop counter rather than a school hall.

The front sets the Queen's portrait, printed in soft sepia, inside a blue Garter band lettered Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, with the Imperial State Crown above and Et Dieu Mon Droit on the ribbon below. Gold scrollwork carries the four national flowers out to either side — thistle, rose, shamrock and the Welsh leek. In the royal arms proper the Garter encircles the shield; here it has been put round a face instead, which is the sort of liberty commemorative china takes and heraldry never does. The reverse is plainer and all gold: E II R, then The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, June 2nd 1953.

Underneath is the one line on the mug that has nothing to do with the Queen. Beside the laurel-wreathed Empire England mark, the factory printed its own batch code: 7B52. Almost no 1953 coronation china records anything about its own making, so identical mugs from different weeks are, today, indistinguishable. Empire was among the few firms that marked its coronation wares this way, and a recorded sister mug carries 8B52.

Which means this run can be sorted, however roughly, in a field where everything else arrives undated. Seventy-odd years on, the crown, the flowers and the factory's own bookkeeping are all still legible on it.