Vintage Royal Albert Christmas Magic Plate 1998 – Old Country Roses, Victorian Christmas Interior, Bone China, England

A Royal Albert Christmas plate from 1998 — the maker's Christmas Magic limited issue, painted around their best-loved pattern of the past sixty years. At the centre, a Victorian Christmas interior in full colour: a Christmas tree dressed in candles and decorations, a fireplace alight, a draped arched window with snow falling beyond, a table set for Christmas dinner with figures in conversation, presents stacked at the foot of the staircase, and a small black cat moving through the scene. Framing the whole composition: a wreath of pink and yellow roses, holly berries, and green leaves — Royal Albert's Old Country Roses pattern, the best-selling bone china design in the world since its launch in 1962. Scalloped wavy rim finished in 22K gilt.

Royal Albert ran Christmas Magic through the late 1990s as part of the Old Country Roses Christmas Celebration series — each year a different Victorian interior scene framed in the signature rose wreath, sold in time for the holiday season and now collected as a set. This one carries the © 1998 mark on the reverse, with the full inscription In Celebration of an Old Country Christmas at Home. A piece for the Old Country Roses completist, for the collector building a Christmas-plate gallery wall, or as the centrepiece of a seasonal mantel arrangement.

Hangs beautifully — bring it out each November, set it on a plate stand on the mantel or rehang it on a Christmas-themed gallery wall, and put it away with the rest of the holiday china in January.