Vintage Meissen Teacup Trio – Cup, Saucer & Dessert Plate, Hand Painted Flowers, Cobalt & Gilt, First Quality Swords, Germany Mid-Century

Three pieces from one Meissen service — teacup, saucer and dessert plate — with wavy scalloped rims over moulded vertical panels, each banded in cobalt beneath a fine gold line, each painted with garden flowers. The cup is about 3.75 inches across and 2 inches high, the saucer 5.5 inches, the dessert plate 7.5 inches. Sold together as the trio.

Painted by hand, and the anemone shows it: petals laid in graded blue from a deep outer edge into a pale throat, the centre stippled violet over ochre. Around it sit a yellow flower, an orange daisy, pink and purple asters and a crimson fringed bloom, all on stems with the grey-green shadow foliage Meissen sets behind its brighter leaves. Smaller sprigs are scattered separately around the borders — a pink bud, a coral bell, a violet, an orange lily — and none of them repeats. The handle: its upper terminal is moulded as a leaf and drawn across in gold, stroke by stroke, the veins running out to the edge, with three gold beads below the joint. Most makers leave that part plain.

Meissen dates its own work. The factory set a dot between the sword tips from 1924 to 1934, and a small arc between the hilts from 1945 to 1947; these three carry neither, and the blades cross at mid-shaft with each guard nearly parallel to the opposite blade — the form adopted in 1934 and kept through the middle of the century.

Deutsche Blumen — German flowers — is the factory's name for the style it arrived at in the mid eighteenth century, when its painters stopped copying Chinese blossom and began drawing European botany instead. It has been in production ever since, which is why single Meissen cups turn up regularly. A trio is another matter: the dessert plate is the first piece to be separated.