Vintage Wedgwood Bone China Wild Grasses Bowl – Silver Ink, 22K Platinum Ribbon, Pattern W4166, England 1960s–1970s

A shallow bowl in Wedgwood bone china — white, almost translucent, made in Stoke-on-Trent in the 1960s or early 1970s — with a composition more like a sumi-e ink painting than a piece of English tableware. At the centre, a small thicket of wild grasses in soft grey watercolour: tall oat grass with hanging seeds, the bell-shapes of harebells caught between the stems, a few dark seed-heads suspended on fine lines. Sweeping across the lower third, painted directly into the glaze, a wide calligraphic gesture in 22K platinum — a single "M" or ribbon-of-water that catches the light and breaks the monochrome.

The mark on the back is the green Wedgwood Portland Vase, with Wedgwood / Bone China / Made in England underneath, plus the painter's notations in red and blue: pattern number W4166, the decorator's letter H, the inspector's X5 and green tick. The "W" prefix sits in Wedgwood's bone china production range that ran from the 1950s through the 1980s; W4166 is from the mid-1960s production window, the period when Wedgwood's bone china studio leaned into modernist motifs alongside the more traditional patterns it was still producing for the high street.

This style — monochrome botanical brushwork plus a single platinum or gilt calligraphic flourish — was Wedgwood Bone China's answer to Rosenthal's Studio Linie in Germany and to the Japanese-influenced sumi-e movement that swept through European decorative arts in the 1960s. The piece reads quietly modern next to the rest of Wedgwood's catalogue, and reads quietly contemporary even now: a piece that would not look out of place on a Japandi shelf, an Arne Jacobsen sideboard, or a minimalist gallery wall.

A piece for the Wedgwood Bone China collector hunting the studio / designer end of the catalogue, for the mid-century modernist collector who wants real period work rather than a reissue, or for the Japandi / wabi-sabi interior that wants one element of platinum to anchor the room.