Vintage Royal Arms Jug – Full Lion and Unicorn Crest, Hand Numbered Limited Edition 424 of 500, Relief Moulded White Porcelain, 20th Century

A small white jug carrying the full Royal Arms of the United Kingdom in colour, and numbered beneath the foot, by hand, as the four hundred and twenty-fourth of five hundred.

Heraldry drawn this small usually loses something in the shrinking. This has lost nothing, and it repays a close look. The quartered shield carries the three lions of England, the rampant lion of Scotland and the harp of Ireland — Wales absent, as it always is, a principality having no place on the arms. The lion is crowned. The unicorn wears its collar and broken chain, as Scotland's unicorn must. The Garter belt runs round the shield with Honi soit qui mal y pense upon it, and Dieu et mon droit lies along the ribbon beneath. Ornamental versions give up one or another of these — the belt goes first, then the chain — so finding every one of them present on four inches of porcelain is a small pleasure.

The body is in the Victorian manner: squared at the lip, drawn in at the waist, scrollwork and shell moulding raised at shoulder and foot, a thread of gold following rim and handle. The number underneath was written rather than printed, its figures carrying the slight unevenness of a pen, so somebody sat and inscribed each of the five hundred in turn.

Five hundred is a genuinely small figure in a field where ten and twenty thousand still pass for limited, and hand-numbering of that sort belongs to short runs made for people who would notice. No factory name accompanies it and no country, so the jug is offered for what it plainly shows — heraldry got right, a small numbered edition, moulding of real quality — rather than for anything it cannot prove. It would sit well among books, or on a desk where the lion and unicorn can be read at close range.