Vintage Royal Albert Anne Mug – The Bronte Collection, Mint Green Chintz Floral, Pink Poppies, Fluted Shape, Fine China England, 2002

A pale mint ground packed corner to corner with flowers — pink poppies, blue larkspur, forget-me-nots and little violet pansies — in the chintz manner of a 1930s English tea table, but made by Royal Albert in 2002. The pattern has a name, and so does its sister: this is Anne, from The Bronte Collection, where Royal Albert gave each chintz colourway the name of one of the Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily, Anne — so that collectors could gather all three, the way you would a set.

It is a nice piece of borrowed atmosphere. Chintz — dense, all-over floral with no ground left bare — was the great English pattern of the 1930s and 40s, and wrapping it in the Brontës' name brings the whole picture with it: the Yorkshire moors, the parsonage at Haworth, a windowsill of flowered cotton. (The word chintz itself, oddly, is not English at all but Hindi, from the printed cottons India sent to Europe in the 1600s.)

Slender and gently fluted, with a pair of green lines at the rim and foot picking up the mint of the ground. Marked Royal Albert · The Bronte Collection · Anne · Fine China · ©2002 on the base.

For the chintz collector, the Brontë reader, or a mixed shelf of flowered mugs that wants one more.