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Cup, cabinet and saucer
This cup and saucer is an expensive, personalised object. It was decorated, like much Nantgarw porcelain, outside of the factory. The blue ground and gilding pattern are copied from fashionable Paris porcelain. It is marked on the underside in gilt script ‘Welsh Porcelain / Asser’, indicating it was sold by the firm of Henry Asser and Co, one of the principal London china dealers.
Cabinet cup and saucer, soft-paste porcelain, clear white translucency, lustrous glaze. Cup cylindrical with stepped, moulded foot, and everted lip, high loop handle with two snake's head terminals; saucer with shallow foot rim, recessed centre and spreading convex rim. The cup decorated at the front with the monogram JW in shaded monochrome reserved on an oblong gilt panel, within swags of brightly coloured flowers suspended from a central ring and supported on either side by a dove in flight, the rear half of the cup with an on-glaze matt blue ground within a gilt frame edged with ermine tails, ornamented with a trellis and flower pattern in tooled gilding; the serpent handle with realistic scale gilding, the interior with a wreath of pink roses between an ermine-edged gilt line at the lip and a broader gilt band below. The saucer with a similar but greyer matt blue ground to the rim, similarly gilt, reserved with two monogrammed gilt panels with dove-born swags, the centre with a bouquet of pink roses within a gilt band and an outer wreath of roses, gilt line to the lip and foot.