Vintage King George VI Queen Elizabeth Coronation Plate – Empire Porcelain Square, Bassano Portraits, Dominion Flags, England 1937

The date on this plate — Crowned 12th May 1937 — belongs to two kings. It was booked for the coronation of Edward VIII; when he abdicated in December 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, the day and the Abbey passed unchanged to his brother, George VI — the stammering, reluctant second son of The King's Speech, shown here beside Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother. This shop carries souvenirs of both versions of that day: a Grafton mug for the coronation that never was, and this square plate for the one that truly happened.

Look closely beneath the twin oval portraits and you can read a tiny printed credit: Bassano — the London studio that photographed three generations of royalty. The faces are noticeably young; the Queen still wears her 1920s bob, which points to the studio's earlier portraits of the couple as Duke and Duchess of York, pressed into service by potteries racing to redo a million souvenirs in five months.

Above the portraits and crossed dominion ensigns, a laurel-wreathed flag shield names the empire of 1937 line by line: India, S. Africa, Canada, N. Zealand, Australia — a family portrait that could never be taken again after 1947. The maker's mark below is its own quiet pun: a crowned shield reading Empire, England — the Empire Porcelain Co. of Stoke-on-Trent, an empire-named works that outlived the empire it painted and closed in 1967 with full order books.

For collectors of the abdication story, Queen Mother devotees, and anyone building the 1937 shelf this shop keeps stocking.