Antique George VI Coronation Mug – Scarce Thurrock Urban District Issue, Queen Elizabeth & Young Princesses, Wedgwood Co Unicorn Mark 1937

Everything on this mug is printed in blue — George VI and Queen Elizabeth in oval portraits side by side, the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in roundels below, a crown above and Coronation 1937 on the ribbon, with the interlaced cypher GR round the back.

The date underneath has a story behind it. 12th May 1937 had long been fixed as the coronation day of Edward VIII, and when he abdicated that December for Mrs Simpson the date stood, with his brother crowned in his place — so every mug from that day carries an appointment made for somebody else. The smaller roundels read differently once that is in mind: the elder of those children, eleven years old and painted in blue on a mug, would wait sixteen years for a coronation of her own.

Beneath the unicorn mark of Wedgwood & Co runs the line that gives this one its character: Thurrock Urban District, 12th May 1937. Councils up and down Britain ordered these by the crate for schoolchildren on coronation day, each with its own name on the base — which is how a mug like this fixes a national event to one small place on the Thames.

That local line is what many collectors follow. The same design exists with dozens of council names, and buyers often look for their own district, so a Thurrock example belongs to Essex local history as much as to royal commemoratives. One point worth mentioning, since the two are easily confused: this is Wedgwood & Co of Tunstall, the Unicorn Pottery, a separate firm from Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria — the unicorn being the simplest way to tell them apart. Nearly ninety years on, one that has stayed whole is a pleasure to come across.