Vintage Royal Collection Golden Jubilee Mug Queen Elizabeth II – Official Palace Issue, Bleu Celeste Ground, Raised Tooled Gold Arms 2002

A Golden Jubilee mug from The Royal Collection, three inches tall in fine bone china, the ground a strong turquoise and the gilding raised above it.

That turquoise is bleu céleste, developed at Sèvres in the 1750s and, being copper-based, among the hardest ground colours in Europe to fire without shifting. George IV collected Sèvres on a scale few monarchs have matched, which is why the Royal Collection holds one of the great gatherings of it anywhere, and why the Collection's own china keeps returning to the colour.

The gilding follows the same tradition. Run a finger across the scrollwork and it stands up from the surface: this is raised and tooled gold, laid on as a paste, fired and then burnished, rather than printed flat. The full royal arms sit on the white reserve — lion and unicorn, the Garter band, Dieu et Mon Droit — with the crown above splitting the year into 20 | 02, an old commemorative trick for fitting a date into a design without spending a line on it. God Save The Queen occupies a gilt cartouche opposite, and the rim carries the dedication right around in gold.

Underneath, the mark is printed in gold rather than the usual black — a separate firing, generally reserved for a factory's best work: The Royal Collection, Fine Bone China, Made in England, ringed by To Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 1952-2002. That 1952 carries a distinction of its own, since jubilees are counted from the accession rather than the coronation, which is why this reads 1952 while the coronation china of the same reign reads 1953. Fifty years of a reign, gathered onto something small enough to drink from.