Vintage Wedgwood Pale Blue Jasperware Royal Portrait Plate – HRH Prince Philip, Laurel Wreath Border, Etruria Gift Box, England 1980s

A small commemorative jasperware plate from Wedgwood, complete with its original Wedgwood of Etruria black-and-gold gift box and the firm's a living tradition booklet — the standard collectible packaging Wedgwood issued in the 1970s–90s. The plate itself is pale blue jasper, ~4.5" across, with a fine laurel-wreath border running the rim and a white sprigged-on profile bust of a royal male figure at the centre, set in formal military or naval dress with visible epaulets — the profile bears the strong straight nose and short side-parted hair of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the subject Wedgwood profiled across several commemorative issues for the Duke's milestone birthdays and royal anniversaries through the 70s and 80s. (Could alternatively read as HRH The Prince of Wales depending on issue — the unlabelled portrait was Wedgwood's habit on this series.)

Wedgwood invented jasperware in 1774 at the Etruria works in Stoke-on-Trent, and the Etruria mark on the gift box dates the original brand line — by the 1970s and 80s the Etruria factory itself had moved (to Barlaston in 1940), but "Wedgwood of Etruria" survived on the boxed-jasperware brand packaging as a heritage signal through to the 1990s. The original a living tradition booklet inside the box still carries the founder's profile portrait — a small Wedgwood self-reference that came in every boxed commemorative of the era.

A complete boxed jasperware commemorative — plate + box + booklet — is markedly more collectable than a plate alone: the box was the first thing collectors discarded, so the surviving complete sets are now what serious Wedgwood collectors and royal-memorabilia buyers chase.

A piece for the Wedgwood Jasperware collector, for the royal commemorative collector, for the Prince Philip fan, for the anglophile interior, or as a complete-boxed royal-themed gift.