Antique Paragon Imari Sugar Bowl & Creamer Set – Cobalt Blue, Iron Red & Tooled Gold, Six-Point Star Mark, Bone China England 1920s

A lidded, twin-handled sugar bowl and its matching milk jug, both worked in the old Imari palette — cobalt blue, iron red and gold over white, laid out in panels of small chrysanthemum rosettes, scrolling vines and banded borders. The bowl stands about four inches to the top of its lid, the creamer about three. Sold together as the pair.

Look closely at the red blooms and the painter's speed is visible: each little chrysanthemum is a burst of quick single strokes, the shorthand of a hand that had run this pattern a thousand times. The gold is where the money went. It is laid thickly and tooled along the high borders, so the texture catches the light at a different angle from the flat ground, and it is gilt-washed over both handles and the domed finial rather than printed. That is a clear step above the transfer gold of cheaper Imari wares, and it is why this pair has the weight of a better piece in the hand.

Both bases carry the same mark: an open six-pointed star above Paragon, Fine Bone China, Made in England, with no royal warrant beneath. Paragon began as the Star China Company and kept the star when it took its own name in 1919; the royal appointments only reached the base in the thirties. A plain star places the pair in the twenties.

The pattern will call Royal Crown Derby to mind, and it is meant to. English factories all painted these Japan patterns after the Japanese Imari originals, and they are hard to tell apart by decoration alone — which is why the trade turns them over instead. Crown, crossed batons and a D is Derby. A six-pointed star is Paragon.