Blairs of Longton, England (Beaconsfield pottery)
Unusual tea set for a few reasons:
Blairs bone china pieces are becoming very difficult to find
Unusual all gold decoration
Includes the long forgotten waste or slop bowl - in the early 20th Century, tea sets included a waste bowl. Its purpose was to allow the tea drinker to empty their now cold partial tea cup and refill from the teapot with fresh hot tea.
Although many Sterling or EPNS tea sets include the waste bowl, English chinaware tea sets may include the tea pot, sugar bowl, creamer jug however very few have a waste bowl included.
Blairs Tea Set for six persons (Incomplete six person setting)
Bone china
Bone china is a soft paste porcelain made from a mix of phosphate (sourced from animal bone), feldspathic materials and kaolin (a clay mineral) and this results in the strongest possible porcelain, this would explain the great condition of this tea set.
Bone China has high mechanical strength and chip resistance, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency.
These Blair pieces are easy to see light shining through and an especially bright white appearance.
All decoration is hand applied and only with metallic gold paint and possibly a gold leaf - the top rim gold gilding is definitely hand applied but the side decorations appear to be of such even thickness that we believe these could be a leaf application.
The decoration theme looks very much like Christmas to us
There are branches of what appear to be holly with fruits and interestingly a flag flying from a pole - the flag doesn't appear to represent anything special, it contains 9x * symbols and 9x 3 dots, each dot group of 3 being arranged in a triangle - no text on the flag or cup.
Positively identified as being produced between 1911 - 1930 from the light brown backstamp
(Printed makers mark)
BLAIRS CHINA
ENGLAND
It would be wise to hand wash only, do not use a dishwasher
Here is a list of the items that we are including in this INCOMPLETE Tea Set from Blairs
a) Medium sized waste bowl (slops)
b) Six tea cups
c) Six tea saucers
d) Five side plates
e) One large cake plate
A total of 19 pieces are being offered, whereas originally we had 20 pieces.
NOTE: One side plate was damaged when we retrieved it from storage, so this makes the tea set incomplete as a six person set but perfectly fine as a 4 person set with spares.
We do NOT have these items, or at least we cannot find them! It has been a long time since we used this tea set and we are not even sure we had the missing items below - it is possible we used other chinaware instead.
f) Tea Pot
g) Sugar bowl
h) Creamer Jug
CONDITION:
Overall, very good to excellent condition.
NO chips
NO discolouring
NO crazing
NO cracks
NO handling or other damage to the applied gold decoration or gilding
The bone china/porcelain is bright white but we do notice a couple of pieces with little grey flecks on the body. As far as we can determine, these are actually in the porcelain mix and seem to be part of the original product - they are not spots created after release from the potters.
The overall design does mean these would tend to best be used on a festive occasion such as Christmas although the overall design and colouring means they will easily blend with other china wares on the dinner table or for display.
