CROWN CHINA - Sweets Bowl
Made in England
This is one of our 'orphan' pieces of English chinaware, why? Because we are not even convinced it is the 'real deal' and could possibly be a foreign 'fake' .... the backstamp just doesn't feel right!
Possibly 1950's era but this is only based on the fact it was hand decorated as later chinaware was more commonly decorated with transferware.
I have called this a bowl although I guess it could also be described as a high-sided dish.
The 'rim' is 120mm diameter and slopes inwards towards the base where the diameter is 75mm
The height is 72mm
Weight of the bowl is 200g
Bright White porcelain base material
Lightly scalloped top rim
Gold gilding around the edge of the rim AND running vertically on the inside and the outside for a distance of 16mm from the top
Interleaved with this vertical Gold gilding is 3 vertical lines in a Lime Green
All of the decoration has been well applied, not 'sloppy' or unprofessional.
The porcelain is translucent, meaning that if the bowl is held to the light you can see the shadow of your finger through the material.
Although simple in design, it is 'pretty' and not 'fussy'
The biggest concern is the backstamp ... Crown China information is difficult to find and in fact the only user of this name that I could find was Royal Albert pre-1935. I am very sure this is NOT Royal Albert product.
The crown graphic is quite 'blurred' and indistinct
CROWN CHINA
MADE IN
ENGLAND
The text looks as though it was not applied properly before the bowl was glazed and fired. More puzzling is the strange Black marks (not mould/bacteria) underneath the backstamp ... the characters are very unclear and I couldn't make out what they were, if they mean anything at all! They look for all the world as though someone started a backstamp and then tried to remove it BEFORE firing - these strange marks are UNDER the glaze, not added later.
The artist has dropped a single Green dot (.) onto the underside, no 'marking' or other more usual marks used by artists.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Absolutely NO cracks
NO crazing at all
Barely any wear at all to the Gold gilding
NO wear to the artwork (such as it is)
NO discolouration inside the bowl
HOWEVER, nothing is perfect in this life and this bowl is no exception. On one side there is a light Brown/Yellow mark or stain - I cannot remove it at all. It appears like something from a heat source but that is just how it appears to me. I have looked VERY closely at this mark and it does appear to be UNDER the glaze - perhaps this item was originally a 'second' but they decided to release it anyway.
A nice sweets bowl, it's a shame that I couldn't positively identify which works it came from though
