Vintage Wedgwood Peter Rabbit Egg Cup – Beatrix Potter, Etruria & Barlaston, Watering Can Story Scene, Queens Ware, England, 1950s–1960s

A small cream egg cup printed with the scene every child knows: Peter Rabbit hiding in the green watering can, and the line straight from the book running around it — "Peter sat down to rest; … he was very damp with sitting in that can." Picture and text together, so a child could read the story over breakfast.

This is Wedgwood's Peter Rabbit nursery ware, made under licence from Frederick Warne & Co., Beatrix Potter's publisher. The base tells you when: Wedgwood of Etruria & Barlaston, Made in England — the mark Wedgwood used from 1940, when it moved to the new Barlaston works, until the mid-1960s, which places this in the 1950s or early 60s. The body is cream Queen's Ware, Wedgwood's two-hundred-year-old earthenware.

There is more history under it than it looks. Beatrix Potter patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903 — reckoned the first licensed literary-character merchandise anywhere — and vetted the artwork herself. This little egg cup sits at the very start of that long tradition.

About one and three-quarter inches. For a Beatrix Potter collector, a new-baby gift with some age behind it, or a cottagecore breakfast shelf.