Vintage Sutherland Accession Mug Queen Elizabeth II – Limited Edition 5000, Five Monarch Portraits, Peter Jones Exclusive, Bone China 2002

An English bone china mug made for the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession, printed around the body with five monarchs in colour, each beneath the year they came to the throne.

Victoria 1837. Edward VII 1901. George V 1910. George VI 1936. Elizabeth II 1952. Accession years, every one — not coronations, which is where the mug takes its name, and why it holds rather more than a single portrait could. Set them side by side and a hundred and fifteen years of the monarchy run round one small cylinder; read them again and you notice that each of those dates is also the day a parent or a predecessor died. Then look inside. Around the rim, in gold, runs one line more: God Save Our Gracious Queen. English potteries have long kept such sentiments on the inner wall, out of sight until the cup is raised — a mug on the shelf, a small piece of ceremony in the hand.

The base is unusually talkative for a commemorative. It gives the piece its own name, The Accession Mug, sets out the occasion in full, records an edition of five thousand and the shop it was made for — Peter Jones of Wakefield and Leeds — and adds the mark of Sutherland, the Longton bone china works that fired it.

Most commemoratives arrive anonymous and are dated by guesswork, so one that catalogues itself this thoroughly is worth having on that count alone. Five thousand is a modest run; sold exclusively through two Yorkshire shops rather than nationally, fewer of them ever travelled far. Accession wares are the counterpart to the coronation pieces of 1953, so anyone following the reign properly wants one of each — and the five-monarch design gives it a second audience among those who collect the succession rather than a single Queen. A well-documented one for a shelf of Elizabeth II, and a mug that will still stand up on a breakfast table.