Antique Wedgwood Dark Blue Jasperware Oxford Pair – University Crest Vase & City Coat-of-Arms Creamer, Edwardian Souvenir, England 1910s

A matched antique pair of Edwardian-era Wedgwood jasperware miniatures, both made for the Oxford souvenir trade — the small twin-handle vase carries the crest of Oxford University (the open book bearing the Latin motto Dominus Illuminatio Mea — "The Lord is my Light" — surmounted by the three-tier royal crown and wreathed in laurel, with OXFORD UNIVERSITY on the banner below), and the small creamer carries the arms of the City of Oxford (the heraldic ox crossing the ford — the visual pun the city is named for — flanked by an elephant and a beaver as supporters, with FORTIS EST VERITAS — "Truth is Strong" — on the banner and OXFORD on the ribbon beneath). Cast solid in deep cobalt blue jasper stoneware, with the white jasper crests applied as separate sprigs and fired into the body.

Wedgwood invented jasperware in 1774, and "solid jasper" — where the colour runs all the way through the clay rather than being a dipped slip layer — is the firm's most prized version of it: the colour can't rub through, the surface holds its matte stoneware finish forever, and the white sprigging stays as crisp as the day it was applied. Both pieces carry the impressed WEDGWOOD ENGLAND mark, dating them to after the 1891 McKinley Tariff Act required English potters to add "England" to their backstamps — the deep cobalt colour and small souvenir scale place them in the Edwardian to inter-war window (circa 1900s–1920s), when Oxford was a major destination on the early-twentieth-century British grand tour.

The pair is a true matched set: not two random Wedgwood pieces with Oxford added, but a coordinated University-crest + City-crest issue — the small vase for a desk or shelf, the creamer for the same. Together they form one of the cleanest Wedgwood Jasperware Oxford groupings — far harder to find as a coordinated pair than as scattered singles.

A pair for the Wedgwood Jasperware collector, for the Oxford alumnus or Rhodes Scholar, for the academic household, for the anglophile who keeps a few good antique English pieces on the bookshelf, or as a graduation / retirement / college-acceptance gift to anyone with an Oxford connection. Sold together as the original pair.