Pattern 3685 Spode bone china London shape Tea Cup & Saucer decorated in a vibrant Imari design incorporating many stylised flowers & butterflies using the traditional palette of iron red & cobalt blue enamels together with rich gilding. This design would have been either copied or adapted from an earlier piece of Oriental Export Ware and was introduced by Spode c1824.
The gilding is good on the tea cup but rather worn on the saucer but never-the-less they still look very attractive for their age. The colours & design on these pieces are joyous and bring much simple pleasure.
This pattern would have been printed in cobalt blue enamel at the first firing & then both the iron red & gilding would have been applied by hand requiring further firing at lower temperatures.
During the first two decades of the 19th century this country was gripped in a passion for Imari porcelain, everyone wanted this fabulous stuff but by c1818 this passion was fading and Spode produced far less Imari patterns from around this time onwards.
This London shape Tea Cup & Saucer is on the waning end of both the fashion for Imari ceramics & the London shape for tea wares. New shapes & ideas for decoration were coming along & most of the new ideas involved fussy shapes, frills & English florals combined in an over-ornamented combination.
You can still see the occasional speckles in Spode's bone china but it was subject to continuous improvement from its first introduction c1799.
This Spode Tea Cup is marked with just the blue printed 'SPODE' backstamp whereas the saucer has this, its pattern number '3685' & a decorator's mark hand painted in red enamel on its base.