Grafton was the trade name used by A. B. Jones & Sons (Ltd) with their works located at Longton, Stock-On-Trent England and they operated between 1900 ~ 1971
Flowers of the forest, roses etc are common designs used for English chinaware and this tends to create chinaware leaning towards the pink/red overall colouring so this predominantly lime green colouring REALLY stands out - very delicate looking and when held (bone china) but it easily measures up against other very classy chinaware such as Paragon.
DLAT Rating: 10/10 (Darling, look at this!)
GRAFTON
Fine Bone China
Teacup ONLY
Pattern: 6450
Hand painted
Small blue flowers with green foliage decorated in a daisy-chain design in two bands with heavy lime green banding near the rim and the base. The top rim is decorated in a mustard colour and inside the teacup is a thin lime green line. Finally the cup handle is also decorated in a pale blue.
White porcelain base colouring
After a bit of research I believe this teacup to have been made at the Longton works in the period late 1930's ~ 1950's perhaps leaning towards the later years as I have seen very similar designs positively dated from the 1950's but WITH the ROYAL text, in fact the ROYAL GRAFTON backstamp is quite common but not so with the GRAFTON only backstamp. This tends to push the date back towards the 1930's but the design isn't really Art Deco and "feels" more 1950's.
BACKSTAMP DETAILS:
Handpainted
GRAFTON
CHINA
MADE IN
ENGLAND
Above this backstamp are the numbers 6450 (fine black ink under the glaze), this number appears on each of the three pieces of the teaset I have and do not appear to be the artist's markings but instead I feel this is the pattern or design number.
Artists marks on the base of handpainted chinaware identify the artist (it is usually how their wages was determined, based on the number of pieces worked on) but interestingly this teacup has NO artist ID markings, dabs, dashes or the like at all. As the backstamp indicates, it is definitely handpainted though.
CONDITION:
Clean - not even a tannin stain inside the teacup
NO crazing - even using a "wet test" no crazing shows
NO cracks
NO chips
NO fleabites
NO wear to the primary artwork nor the various areas of lime green and mustard colouring.
