Vintage Shelley Bone China Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Dish – Sepia Portrait, Shell Handles, Lion & Unicorn, Gilt Trim, England 1953

A Shelley bone-china dish for the coronation of 2nd June 1953 — and where most souvenirs of that summer settled for printed emblems, Shelley fired an actual photograph into the glaze. In warm sepia, the twenty-seven-year-old Queen smiles beneath the Diamond Diadem — the crown of the stamps and coins, worn on the drive to Westminster Abbey — in a portrait in the manner of Dorothy Wilding's official accession photographs. Around her, a beaded oval frame, the lion and unicorn steadying a blue-dotted shield, St Edward's Crown above, and a green ribbon lettered June 2nd · Elizabeth II · 1953 with Coronation in gold below.

The dish itself is pure Shelley: a moulded, water-rippled body with two shell-fluted wing handles striped in hand-brushed gold, the wavy rim edged in gilt — the whole piece opening like a scallop. Dishes of this form served butter or sweets in 1953; they hold rings and earrings just as gracefully now.

The green script Fine Bone China Shelley England mark underneath is the post-war stamp used until the pottery closed in 1966 — and Shelley's story gives this little dish its edge. The firm began as Wileman & Co., traded as "The Foley China", lost the legal war over that name in 1925, and reinvented itself under the Shelley name — which went on to become one of the most collected marques in English china, with collector clubs worldwide mourning its 1966 closure to this day.

For the Shelley collector first, the coronation collector second, and anyone who likes their royal history served on a seashell.