Vintage Wedgwood Jasperware 1995 World Figure Skating Championships Birmingham Trinket Box – Pair Lift, Blue Jasperware, England

A small lidded Jasperware trinket box made by Wedgwood as a commemorative edition for the 1995 World Figure Skating Championships, held in Birmingham, England that March. The lid carries a low-relief tableau in classic Wedgwood white sprig: a pair-skating couple in the pair lift / death-spiral position — the man steady on the ice, the woman lifted horizontal — framed in a wreath of oak leaves. The base of the box is unmarked Wedgwood blue; the reverse carries the printed inscription:

> Commemorative Edition > Commissioned for the > 1995 > World Figure Skating Championships > Birmingham, England.

The 1995 Championships were a notable year in figure skating history: Canadian Elvis Stojko won the men's title at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, Chen Lu of China took the women's title, and Wedgwood was commissioned to make a small run of these blue-Jasperware boxes as official commemoratives. Now thirty years on, surviving Jasperware commemoratives from specific sporting events are increasingly hard to find — particularly in original condition with the printed inscription intact.

A piece for the figure-skating collector, for the Wedgwood Jasperware enthusiast filling out a commemorative shelf, for the Canadian collector marking Elvis Stojko's 1995 world title year, or as a quietly specific gift for a skater / coach / dancer in your life.