Johnson Bros Powder Border Green Band Dinner Service, c. 1935–1960

The Set

A twenty-three piece green and white dinner service in the Powder Border pattern by Johnson Brothers of Staffordshire. The border is a broad band of powder green, printed in a fine stippled texture that reads as soft and slightly mottled rather than flat, laid between the molded rim and a thin gilt line. Inside the band the body is a warm ivory, and the whole service sits on a molded rope edge, a twisted gadroon worked into the rim of every flat piece.

The service runs five dinner plates, seven smaller plates, four square plates with cut corners, three saucers, a flat teacup, a large oval platter, a small oval platter and a two handled cream soup bowl. That is a working table for five with the smaller plates doubling for salad and dessert, and two platters to serve from.

The gilt is hand applied, which is why it runs out and thins in places along the handles and the rims. Powder banding of this kind was Johnson Brothers at its most confident: the color does all the work, with no florals, no transfer scenes and no cartouches, and the only ornament is the rope edge already modeled into the blank.

History & Provenance

Johnson Brothers was founded in 1883 at the Charles Street Works in Hanley, Stoke on Trent, taking over the premises of J. W. Pankhurst and Company after Pankhurst went bankrupt the previous year. The firm made earthenware and sanitary ware, built an enormous export trade to North America, and stayed in production until 2004.

Its marks move in a documented sequence. The earliest, around 1883, read Johnson Bros Late Pankhurst and Co. From 1883 to about 1913 the firm used a Royal Ironstone China mark carrying the Royal Arms, and from around 1900 a Royal Semi-Porcelain mark. From roughly 1913 onward the marks simplify into the Johnson Bros England family, and it is these that carry printed pattern names. Much later, in the 1980s, after the firm was folded into the Wedgwood Group's Creative Tableware Division, the familiar Bull in a China Shop mark appears.

The mark on this service is a printed green cameo, a woman in profile within a scrolled oval, lettered POWDER BORDER, MADE IN ENGLAND, BY JOHNSON BROS. That is a named pattern mark of the post 1913 family and it predates the Wedgwood era bull entirely, which brackets the service between about 1913 and the early 1980s. Within that span the powder band, the hand applied gilt line and the rope edge blank belong to the middle decades, when English makers were moving away from florals toward color blocked banding.

The pattern is long discontinued and is still carried by the replacement services, which is the useful signal for a buyer: a service in this pattern can be added to rather than being a closed set.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Green and white is the one dinnerware scheme that never dates, because it borrows from the garden rather than from a decade. This service will sit on bare wood, on linen, or on a painted table and look deliberate against all three, and the gilt line is thin enough to read as a detail rather than as formality.

A banded service is also easier to live with than a patterned one. There is nothing in the well of the plate to compete with the food, and the border frames rather than decorates. That is why banded English earthenware keeps turning up on the tables of people who actually cook.

Twenty-three pieces is enough to set a table for five and still have serving dishes, and because the pattern is still carried by the replacement services it can be built out rather than left as it stands.