Antique Royal Worcester Painted Fruit Saucer Signed Flexman – Apples Plums, Gilded Well, Puce Mark Dated 1922, Small Cabinet Dish

A saucer, and only a saucer — the small cup that stood in it is long gone. It is about three and a half inches across, with a sunken centre well gilded solid and burnished, and around that well a still life runs over the whole face: two apples, one yellow and one flushed red, a bunch of dark plums beside them. A gold line finishes the rim. It hangs or stands as a small picture.

Worcester's fruit is painted the way an easel still life is painted, and the plums show it: a laid ground, a glaze of colour over it, then a single touch of light left bare on the shoulder of each. That is not filling in a printed outline. It is drawing an object round.

Harder than the fruit is the ground behind it — moss green shading into warm brown, soft enough to open a distance behind the apples without going muddy. Collectors look at the background first: painters who can render fruit are common, painters who can push the air back behind it are not. The enamels went through the kiln more than once, each firing shifting the colour, so the painter had to work for what the fire would return. The well was gilded separately and polished after.

1922, and the factory says so itself. Royal Worcester added a dot beside its mark each year from 1892, and by 1915 there were twenty-four of them; the count was restarted with a star in 1916, one dot a year thereafter. This piece carries the puce crowned mark with a star and six dots, which is 1922 exactly.

Signed Flexman at the edge of the painting. Worcester's fruit painters each signed their own work, and one service was often shared between several hands, so the name is the first thing a collector reads. Flexman appears in the auction record beside Austin, Price and Harper, though not among the most sought-after names. Most fruit on the market is post-war; a signed piece from 1922 is the scarcer end.