Vintage Grosvenor Apple Green Teacup & Saucer – Cabbage Rose Bouquet, Gilt Scalloped Rim, Gold Filigree, Bone China, England 1940s

A Grosvenor bone-china teacup and saucer in apple green and gold — a soft mint ground with a white reserve at the centre, a cabbage-rose bouquet held inside a frame of gilt filigree, and a gadrooned gold rim worked in little scalloped teeth around the edge of both pieces. The interior of the cup is green; the handle is a gold-lined scroll.

The colour and the gilding are what carry this set. Apple green with gold is one of the more sought-after combinations in mid-century English teaware, and Grosvenor has laid the gold on generously here — the scalloped gadroon edge, the fine filigree scrollwork framing the bouquet, and the gilt line down the scrolled handle. The cabbage-rose bouquet at the centre — a red rose with blue delphinium, a yellow daisy and a scatter of small blooms — is a finely detailed floral print rather than hand-painting (the red rose shows the soft stippled texture of a lithographic transfer), the standard way the better English firms set a floral centre into a gilt reserve in the 1940s and 50s. It reads beautifully against the green ground and the white well.

Turn it over and the base carries the script Grosvenor / Bone China / England mark, with a gold hand-written pattern number beneath. Grosvenor was the bone-china line of Jackson & Gosling of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent — a careful, well-gilded maker of cabinet teaware sitting just below the better-known names, which is part of why a set this pretty stays affordable.

A cup-and-saucer for the apple-green and gold tea shelf, for the cabbage-rose and cottagecore cabinet, for the grandmillennial table, or as an afternoon-tea, wedding, or Mother's Day gift that looks far dearer than it costs.