Vintage Royal Doulton Bunnykins Camping Scene Plate – Tent Campfire Cookout, Running Rabbit Border, English Bone China Nursery Ware 1960s

A whole rabbit family out camping: a canvas tent pitched at the wood's edge, Mrs Bunnykins arriving with a basket of carrots and eggs, one rabbit in a red coat swinging an axe at the kindling while another crouches to lift a billy-can off the fire. Enamel mugs sit in the grass beside the chopped logs. Look into the corners and you'll find the mice — one hauling twigs to the flames, two more tumbling over a log — the small stowaways Bunnykins scenes nearly always hide.

The colour is worth a moment. The outlines are printed, then the filling is brushed on by hand, and you can see where a hand did it: the red of the coats runs a whisker past the line at one elbow, the blue of the apron pools slightly at the hem, and the smoke-grey trees are laid in as flat washes with the white of the china left showing through for sky. Around the rim runs the band of little brown rabbits at full stretch over tufts of green.

Underneath is the brown English Fine Bone China · Bunnykins · Regd Trade Mark stamp with its running-rabbit device. The scene has a name of its own, Camp Site, which came in around 1959 from Walter Hayward, the designer who carried the rabbits on after Barbara Vernon's originals — so the plate sits in the 1959–75 window.

Eight inches of genuine bone china. A cheerful thing for a Bunnykins collector chasing the named scenes, a new-baby or christening gift, or a camping-loving little one.