Date: circa 1876
Period: Late Victorian
Maker: George Jones
This George Jones coffee cup and saucer are an English porcelain design icon. With its distinctive 7-shape handle, the angular cup anticipates Art Deco by half a century. The hand-painted and hand-coloured violets are also daringly modern in their boldness of scale and full use of the white as a canvas.
The bases bear a design registration lozenge with numeric and letter codes for 29 May 1876. This was the date on which George Jones & Sons registered their ‘Tall Chad’ shape. The pattern number, 4588, is also painted in purple.
‘Tall Chad’ features in several books on British ceramics, including Staffordshire Porcelain edited by Geoffrey Godden, plate 701 on page 527, A Compendium of British Cups by Michael Berthoud, plate 1311 on page 219, and George Jones Ceramics by Robert Cluett, plates 251-257.
CONDITION Mint/perfect. Some gilding streaks on the white were left by a careless decorator.
This and another ‘Tall Chad’ coffee cup and saucer are being sold either individually or as a pair.
Cup Height: 6 cm; Width: 8.7 cm, with handle; Rim diameter: 6.6 cm Saucer Diameter: 13.1 cm
Weight: 168 g
Origin: Stoke-on-Trent, England
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)