W H Grindley and Sons Ivory Ware – a rare 41 piece tea set

This is probably the most complete large tea set I’ve ever acquired.  In the 19th and early 20th century most tea services were for 12 with an enormous sugar bowl and a slop bowl too for the tea leaves.  I always wondered how one teapot filled all those cups but clearly they had to keep topping up and often they came with a large hot water jug as well.   This tea set has everything it would have had except either the slop bowl or the sugar bowl. It’s got one large bowl which could be the slop bowl or the sugar bowl, from now on it’s the sugar bowl.   People used to take a lot more sugar than they do now, hence very large sugar bowls.

W H Grindley and Sons manufactured earthenware from Tunstall, Stoke on Trent from 1880 to 1991.  This particular tea set dates from the 1930s 1940s and is part of the Ivory trademark.  The ltd on the mark dates the tea set from 1925 onwards but the style takes it to the 1930s even 1940s.

If you find a Grindley item with Tunstall in the back stamp then it’s one of the older pieces prior to 1891.

Some of the items are marked with a pattern “Winthrop” but I can’t find any record of it and what’s really unusual about this set is that there are 41 pieces including the teapot, jug and sugar bowl and two cake plates. It’s rare to find 12 trios though.

This tea set is currently for sale Antik Seramika’s ebay shop at £59.99 including postage or directly from Antik Seramika at mail@antikseramika.co.uk for £52.00 including postage.