Vintage Shelley Art Deco Rim Soup Bowl – Gold Geometric Wildflower Medallion, Beaded Orange Rim, Bone China, England 1950s

A wide-rim soup bowl in Shelley bone china — fired pure white, with the same crisp gold geometric medallion at the centre that Shelley used across its mid-century studio service: a gilt-grid circle holding a stylised botanical (wheat ear, wild flower spray), with smaller gilt-cross cartouches at the rim quadrants and a beaded gold-and-pumpkin-orange band running the edge.

Shelley was founded in 1872 in Longton, Staffordshire and renamed from Wileman & Co. in 1925; in 1966 it was absorbed by Allied English Potteries and production stopped. Every Shelley piece on the market today is finite supply. This bowl is from the late geometric service Shelley produced in the late 1950s / early 60s — the same service as the matching trio + plates set and the gravy boat already listed in this shop (listings #84 and #87). The three listings together reconstitute most of the original Shelley dinner setting; a collector who buys all three has a near-complete period service.

The rim soup format — wide flat rim with a deep central well — is the proper soup or pasta bowl of an English mid-century dinner service: large enough for a generous portion, deep enough to keep it warm, with the decorated rim still showing around the rim of the plate when in use.

A piece for the Shelley collector building toward a complete service, for the Mid-Century Modern dinner-table host, or as a single elegant soup bowl from one of the most collectible English bone-china names of the twentieth century.