Australian decorated bright white porcelain, gilded entirely in 22 Ct Gold (according to the sticker attached to the coffee pot from the same set) 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 added alloys are essential to create strength and hardness.
AVONDALE 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. I personally think that the former is far more likely and I have seen this exact same design marked underneath as "Made In Japan" but not with a makers name. The important thing is that the porcelain is of a very high quality but the blank is NOT Australian made. Many Australian ceramic suppliers used imported 'blanks' back in the 1960's ~ 1970's and then locally decorated the blanks e.g Westminster and St. Kilda to name just a couple.
This demi cup by Avondale is absolutely identical to St Kilda demi cups we have seen previously - it is as though a "central workshop" was producing these gold plated items and backstamping them "as required" to their customer orders.
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.
These demi cups (in our opinion) are pretty delicate, the gold gilding in particular. In our experience it doesn't seem to take much handling before you can see gold gilding wear (little white areas) becoming visible, we had this happen with another identical coffee set. They look "pretty" (if flashy Gold is your thing) but require delicate handling and NEVER EVER put these into your dishwasher!
You need dark glasses when sitting near these! others probably would not agree but we considered these gold coffee sets to be quite gaudy!
In a moment of madness we bought some of these years ago (we had a couple of complete coffee sets). 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 sets sat in the display cabinet 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 .... the individual pieces are now seeking a new home!
I am advertising this Gold coffee set 'piece by piece'
Here is the demitasse cup .... ONLY
DLAT Rating: 9/10 (Darling Look At This!)
AVONDALE FINE CHINA - Demitasse cup
Design: Entirely Gold gilded with no other decoration
Porcelain (Kaolin) blank body and the body of the cup has a 'twist' pattern which enhances the light reflecting off the gold gilding.
Circa 1960's ~ early 1970's
'Australian' porcelain ware although it's heritage is questionable, see some thoughts about the heritage in the notes above.
These are demitasse cups (meaning small, larger than a dolls cup but not by much!), often used on the Continent, some call them 'doll cups'
Dimensions: 65mm diameter
Weight: 30g
I have two of these demi cups, ONE has the AVONDALE backstamp, the other is completely blank except for the gilders markings
BACKSTAMP DETAILS:
All text is printed in Grey
(Graphic surrounds the text)
AVONDALE
CHINA
AUSTRALIA
There is a gilder's mark on ONE demi cup but that cup has no backstamp at all
CONDITION:
Very good condition, so much gold that the eyes hurt! Just don't drop it, only then will you realise it was porcelain (it will now be in little pieces all over the floor)
I have just two of these demitasse cups left, the condition described below is general to BOTH of them, with any specific notes about each individual cup following this general description
NO chips
NO cracks
NO damage to the decorative artwork - why? because there is no artwork as such, just gold gold gold!
Barely any wear to the Gold gilding, if anything I would say on the very top of the cup rim but I am talking only extremely light wear that is very hard to see.
There is nothing further to add in relation to the individual cups
