Antique Royal Doulton Kingfisher Trio – Hand-Painted Bird on Bamboo, RD 679032, Cup Saucer Side Plate, Fine Bone China, England 1920s

A small three-piece tea trio in early Royal Doulton bone china — cup, saucer, and side plate — each piece centered on a single hand-painted European kingfisher perched on a slender bamboo branch. The bird itself is rendered in the painterly way Royal Doulton reserved for its registered patterns of the 1920s: deep cobalt and emerald gradient through the head and wing, bright kingfisher-orange across the breast, the long black beak in profile. Below and around, watercolour bamboo in soft blue-green, a few red berries on slender stems. The rim is the quietest of green lines — no gold, no scallop — the Japanese-influenced quiet of early-Art Deco Royal Doulton.

The mark on the back is the green Royal Doulton lion-and-crown with Royal Doulton / England, the early version of the mark that the firm used between 1902 and 1922 — before they added "Made in" to the standard stamp. Beside it: the pattern name Kingfisher and RD. No. 679032 — the United Kingdom registered-design number, taken out by Royal Doulton in 1921–22 when the Kingfisher pattern was first set down at the patent office. The trio dates to that early production window, the early 1920s through the 1930s — now between 95 and 105 years old, sitting right at the edge of antique status.

Royal Doulton's Kingfisher pattern belongs to the brief, beautiful moment in English bone china when the Japonisme revival of the 1920s was working its way into the catalogues of the established London makers. The motif is Asian-derived — kingfisher and bamboo, a Japanese pairing — but the rendering is unmistakably English: scientific in the bird, painterly in the plant, restrained in the rim. Royal Doulton produced Kingfisher across several shapes over decades; this version is the earliest, with the pre-1922 backstamp, and the cleanest in its line work.

A piece for the Royal Doulton collector hunting the pre-1922 marks, for the kingfisher / bird-china specialist, for the Japandi or mid-century modernist interior that wants one true vintage anchor, or as a gift for the birdwatcher or naturalist.