Vintage Royal Albert Alberta Rose Cream & Sugar Set – Provincial Flowers, Black Ground, Gold Trim, Lidded, Bone China, England 1975

A lidded sugar bowl and its matching creamer, banded around the middle in black and set with open pink wild roses. The lid carries rosebuds instead, and is finished with a gold flower-form knop. Both pieces have scalloped rims, scrolled handles and a broad gold band around the foot. The sugar stands about 11 cm with its lid on; the creamer about 9.

The flower is drawn botanically, not decoratively. A prickly rose has five single petals, not the packed double bloom of a garden rose, and that is exactly what is here — five petals, a yellow-green centre, and a ring of dark red stamen dots, with the toothed leaves the species actually carries. Setting it on black rather than white is the second decision, and an unusual one for this series: the black band throws the pink forward so the flowers read from across a room. Gold lines close the band top and bottom, the foot is banded solid, and the knop on the lid was gilded and then burnished, which is why it catches light unevenly across its petals.

Nineteen seventy-five, or shortly after. Both pieces are marked Royal Albert, Bone China, England, with the pattern named as Alberta Rose within the Provincial Flowers series and a copyright line reading 1975 Royal Albert Ltd. The date is printed rather than inferred from the wording of the mark, which is unusual on English china.

Made in Staffordshire for Canada. The Provincial Flowers series gave each province its own official flower, and Alberta's is the wild prickly rose, named in law in 1930 and growing across the prairies and into the boreal north. Royal Albert drew it as it grows rather than as a florist would arrange it, so the set carries a real plant, not a decorative one.