Australian decorated bright white porcelain, gilded entirely in 22 Ct Gold (according to the sticker attached to the coffee pot) 22 Ct Gold is good quality, despite the small percentage of alloys that exist in its mixture (22K gold is only 91.67% pure gold) because these alloys are essential to create strength and hardness.
ST KILDA CHINA
If you are interested in the background to this porcelain ware, best of luck! Stories abound and with not much in the way of fact behind those stories but a couple of things are 'for sure'.
The bright white porcelain 'blank' was imported (un-decorated) possibly from Japan or some people even suggest, England. The important thing is that the porcelain is of a very high quality but it is NOT Australian made. Many companies did this back in the 1960's ~ 1970's e.g Westminster and Avondale to name just a couple.
Funny enough, the demi cups (these will be offered separately) have Avondale as their backstamp, not St Kilda China, although the design is identical.
The gilding is also of high quality, the thickness is evenly distributed and not "spotty" I have no idea how the gilding was done but I couldn't imagine it was by hand due to the very large surface areas - perhaps some form of dipping was used. A clue could be underneath, I can see a brown coloured liquid has been applied to the porcelain over which the gold has been applied. Perhaps this brown liquid is some sort of substrate which makes the gold coating more stable with the porcelain underneath! NOR on this one (No Idea Really)
These seem to be pretty durable too ... after approximately 40 years the gold remains stable and intact with no fade, flaking or other such horrors although I must admit (as mentioned above) we used these perhaps a half dozen times and then put them away - you need dark glasses when sitting near these, others probably would not agree but we considered these quite gaudy!
We had and still have quite a bit of English china and porcelain to find new homes for but like our paintings, there are some that are simply totally out of character (for us). In a moment of madness we bought these some years ago (we had the complete coffee set). Well it's a personal taste 'thing', we love Art Deco and nice well made and hand decorated chinawares with beautiful English flowers but this type of china, covered in gold decoration was never really 'us' and after a couple of uses back in the 1970's, the coffee set sat in the display cupboards for years never seeing the light of day!
This type of design is not for us but that's not to say someone else won't love them .... they are now seeking a new home!
I will be advertising the coffee set 'piece by piece'
Here is the double handled sugar bowl with lid .... ONLY
DLAT Rating: 10/10 (Darling Look At This!)
ST KILDA FINE CHINA - Double Handled Sugar Bowl (with lid)
Design: Entirely Gold gilded with no other decoration
Porcelain (Kaolin) blank body and lid has a 'twist' which enhances the light reflecting off the gold gilding.
Circa 1960's ~ early 1970's
Australian porcelainware although it's heritage is questionable, see some thoughts about this above.
Dimensions: 90mm height (base to the top of the large lid button handle)
130mm wide (from handle to handle)
95mm diameter bowl at the widest point
Weight: 200g
BACKSTAMP DETAILS:
All text is printed (not handwritten) in gold (leaf?)
ST KILDA (text follows an arc)
FINE CHINA
AUSTRALIA (text follows a reverse arc)
Interestingly, there IS an artist's mark (in Gold of course) associated with the backstamp so there does appear to be at least some hand crafting in the gold gilding.
CONDITION:
Stunning, so much gold that the eyes hurt! Just don't drop it, only then will you realise it was porcelain (now in little pieces all over the floor)
NO chips
NO cracks
NO wear noticed to the gold gilding. The usual 'hotspots' for handling wear are the handles and the lid button handle. Nowhere can I find ANY signs of wear at all.
NO damage to the decorative artwork - why? because there is no artwork as such, just gold gold gold!
