SCOTTISH PRIDE! WORCESTER CUP AND SAUCER C.1770-80

Scottish reconciliation period, two generations after Culloden when the Scottish rebels were broken and Scottish royalists tolerated at length. The pressures of war with America and France (with Spain waiting in the wings) demanded that England, with her Hanover king, enlist every resource. Despite their defeat, the voracity of the Scots was universally acknowledged and their military support eagerly courted. The display of the thistle, an icon of Scottish pride, was forbidden by law before 1782, during which this set was produced. Yet, politics dictated that it be allowed, and Scottish pride, insisted that it be displayed against the law which called for imprisonment for such a display, and merely a few years earlier, would have been fully enforced. The body of both pieces of shanked (spirally fluted) form with scalloped edges. Both decorated with gold on cobalt underglaze with primary thistle motif. Both with the Dr. Wall crescent mark underglaze. Both in fine preservation with the gold intact including the vulnerable scalloped edges. The quality is clearly indicative of one of the aristocratic Scottish clans.