Vintage Foley Bone China Teacup And Saucer – Pale Green Outside, Yellow Inside, Hand Coloured Floral Sprays, E Brain Lion Mark, 1940s

A Foley teacup and saucer in bone china, pale green outside and bright yellow within. The bowl is wide and shallow, softly waved at the rim, with a green loop handle; the saucer matches. A spray of flowers sits inside the cup and another on the saucer — pink roses, magenta cosmos, violets and grey-green leaves. A gilt line finishes both rims.

The two colours are the interesting part. Green outside and yellow inside cannot go on together — one is laid and fired, then the other laid and fired again, so a cup like this passed through the kiln twice before any decoration at all. Most were a single colour for that reason.

The flowers were printed first and coloured by hand afterwards. The whole drawing — outlines, stems, leaf veins, the hook at each flower centre — is one red-orange ink, and that same hook turns up twice over. The purple, yellow and green went on after, and they wander: one yellow centre is a crescent that never fills its printed circle. That wandering is why no two of these cups come out alike.

The nineteen-thirties to the early fifties, most likely the earlier end. The black mark gives a rampant lion over an interlaced EB monogram, 18 and 50 either side, Foley Bone China · Made in England around it. Those figures date the works, not the cup. Made in England points past 1920, and Coalport absorbed E. Brain in 1958, retiring the Foley name.

E. Brain & Co of Fenton, a small firm with one remarkable episode to it. In November 1934 its art director staged Modern Art for the Table at Harrods, bringing Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Laura Knight and Barbara Hepworth into a pottery. Twelve sets of each were made; nobody marketed it, and it stopped there. This cup came from that same works.