Small Gilded Dish with Moulded Scalloped Rim and a Smoky Worn Gold Border, Stamped 22 Karat Gold over a Blue Crest Mark
Viridian Eclection
The PieceA small white dish with a border that has aged into something nobody designed.The rim is scalloped and lightly moulded, carrying a relief pattern of shallow arches and lobes that catches t...
The Piece
A small white dish with a border that has aged into something nobody designed.
The rim is scalloped and lightly moulded, carrying a relief pattern of shallow arches and lobes that catches the light along its edge.
Around that rim runs a wide band that was once solid gold. What is there now is a dense smoky mottle — charcoal and warm brown shot through with surviving flecks and passages of bright gold, brightest along the extreme outer edge where the rim curls over.
Inside it, a fine gold line rings the well, and the centre is left plain.
The body is a clean off-white with a glossy glaze.
Underneath are two marks: a stamp in black reading 22 KARAT GOLD, and beneath it a faint blue underglaze device — a circular crest with shield forms set into it, too lightly printed to read.
History & Provenance
The stamp is a sales claim, and it belongs to a particular moment in American kitchens.
Through the 1940s and 1950s, gold-decorated dinnerware was a mass-market staple in the United States, and potteries competed on how much gold and what purity. Stamping 22 KARAT GOLD on the back was the argument: not a gold-coloured lustre, not a thin wash, but high-karat gold applied and burnished. Whole services were sold on that line in department stores and by mail order.
What the stamp does not do is name a maker, and the blue crest that would have is too faint to read. Enough survives to see that it is a circular device with shield forms inside it, the kind of pseudo-armorial mark potteries on both sides of the Atlantic used, but not enough to attribute. The dish is offered unattributed, with no date claimed.
The border is worth understanding on its own terms, because it explains what you are looking at. Gold is not laid directly onto porcelain. It goes on over a dark flux, a reddish-brown underlayer that binds it and is then covered and burnished bright. When that gold thins, the flux beneath is what shows, and it reads as smoke — charcoal, plum and brown where the gold has gone, with bright metal surviving wherever a hand or a stacked plate never reached.
That is what has happened here, and it is stated plainly rather than described around. The gold on this band is substantially depleted. What is left is the record of the object being used.
Product Details
| Object | Small shallow glazed dish with a moulded scalloped rim |
| Dimensions | Approximately 5½ in across |
| Form | Shallow well inside a scalloped rim moulded with a relief band of shallow arches and lobes |
| Decoration | Wide gilded rim band, now largely worn to its dark underlayer and reading as a smoky charcoal-and-brown mottle with bright gold surviving along the outer edge and in scattered passages; a fine gold line around the well; plain centre |
| Marks | Stamped in black to the underside: 22 KARAT GOLD. Beneath it a faint blue underglaze circular crest with shield forms, too lightly printed to identify. No maker named; offered unattributed, and no date is claimed. |
| Condition | The gold border is substantially worn and that is the first thing to know about this dish. What was a solid gold band now reads as a dark smoky mottle, with bright gold surviving only at the extreme outer edge and in scattered patches. The thin gold line at the well is broken in places. The porcelain itself is sound: no chips, no cracks, no crazing and no repairs, the rim smooth all the way round and the moulded relief crisp. The glaze is bright and the body is clean. Sold as a decorative object, priced for the gold loss. Condition Guaranteed. |
| Availability | One of a Kind — 1 Available |
Why It Belongs in Your Home
Buy this one for the border it has now, not the one it had.
A solid gold band is a formal object and it asks for a formal room. What is on this dish instead is smoke — a dark, uneven, warm-toned ring that shades from charcoal to brown and breaks into gold at the edge. It is closer to a fired glaze effect than to trim, and no factory could sell it deliberately.
That makes it far easier to place than the piece it started as. Dark and gold against white sits with unpolished brass, old mirror, worn leather, stoneware and dark wood. It does not need the rest of a service around it to make sense.
The moulded rim is still doing its job. Shallow arches and lobes in relief carry shadow all the way round, and against the broken dark band the effect is more interesting than it was under solid gilding.
At five and a half inches it goes where a plate cannot. On a dresser it takes rings and cufflinks; on a desk, clips and stamps; on a bathroom shelf, a ring and a watch. Under a squat candle, the surviving gold throws light back.
And it is honest. The gold is gone because somebody used this dish for decades, and the piece is priced for that rather than photographed around it. That is a different proposition from a perfect object, and for the right buyer a better one.
A note on care, and it matters more here than on an intact piece. Never wash it in a dishwasher and never scour the band. What gold remains is thin and sitting on a worn surface; detergent and abrasives will take the rest.
Do not polish it. There is no solid metal to bring up — polish removes gold rather than brightening it, and the surviving passages are the best thing about the border.
Hand wash in warm water with a soft cloth, dry at once, and keep it out of the microwave; the remaining gold is still metal.
Stack it with a felt pad or paper round between pieces if you stack it at all, and keep it out of direct sun.
Every piece is packed with professional-grade materials: multiple foam layers, double-boxing, directional and fragile handling labels. For large furniture we use custom timber crating. We photograph packing before dispatch and can provide images on request.
White-glove delivery is complimentary within 100 miles of Reno, NV. National shipping quotes provided at checkout. All shipments are photographed and documented. Damage claims must be filed with the carrier; we provide all documentation needed to support your claim.
Local pickup is available at Viridian HQ (Reno, NV) with 2–4 days notice. Contact us to arrange. Private viewings also available.
All antique and vintage items are sold as described and all sales are final. Each listing includes detailed condition notes and photographs so you can make a fully informed decision. We encourage buyers to ask questions — about condition, dimensions, finish, provenance — before purchasing.
Antiques are irreplaceable and one-of-a-kind. Carrier handling is outside our control once a piece has left our facility, and major carriers including FedEx do not insure antiques. We do everything within our power to ensure safe transit, but cannot accept liability for carrier damage. If damage occurs in transit, we will provide full documentation to support your carrier claim.
Have a question? — we're happy to provide additional photos, condition detail, or discuss the piece directly.
