A handful of delft dishes are known carrying the date 1682 alongside royalist motifs. A Brislington charger with the date and a portrait of Charles II is pictured in Frank Britton’s English Delftware in the Bristol Collection, while another in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, depicts Queen Catherine of Braganza flanked by the initials KR.
The significance of the 1682 date is uncertain but it could relate to the death of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a cousin of Charles II and a Royalist commander during the Civil War.
Banished from England after the fall of Bristol, he returned following the Restoration, dying at his house in Westminster on November 29, 1682.
This 13in (33cm) dish, painted in blue and yellow with a large crown and the date 1682 within a border of tulips and stylised foliage, was in excellent condition, showing only typical glaze losses to the rim. It was part of a once large Cambridge collection of early English pottery formed by the vendor’s grandfather in the 1930s. It was thought that many pieces were given to the Fitzwilliam Museum.
