Vintage Foley Bone China Coronation Mug Queen Elizabeth II – Westminster Abbey June 2nd Dated Base, Full Colour Hand Tinted Royal Arms 1953

The royal arms sit in full colour on the front, under a ribbon carrying the Queen's name; round the back come Coronation, June 2nd 1953 and Westminster Abbey. English bone china, with a gilt line at rim and foot and a band of green leaves circling the lower body.

Most coronation mugs give a name and a year and stop there. This one adds the day and the building, then repeats all three underneath in violet script: Foley Bone China, made in England, to commemorate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on June 2nd 1953. A small thing, and a pleasing one — nothing here has to be guessed at.

The date has a story of its own. The Queen had come to the throne sixteen months earlier, in February 1952, on the death of her father, and the coronation waited on the end of mourning and on preparations for the first televised coronation in history. Some twenty million watched, and a good many British households bought their first television set in order to. Commemorative china came out in proportion, so the maker's name is a useful guide: Foley was the trade name of E. Brain & Co of Fenton, a well-regarded bone china house, retired in 1963 when the firm merged with Coalport — which places anything carrying it before that year.

Collectors keep the coronation pieces of 1953 separate from the accession pieces of 1952, and this belongs to the former — among the better-made too, in bone china rather than the earthenware of most council mugs. Seventy years on, the name, the day and the place are all still legible on it, which is a good deal more than most coronation china can manage.