This delightful Chamberlain Worcester coffee cup is in the ‘old Japan’ pattern 240 that Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson ordered for a tea and breakfast service when he visited the factory in 1802.

The cup is slightly tapered and known as an ‘early bucket can’, and lavishly decorated in ‘English Imari’ style. The porcelain is of greyish hue, typical of Chamberlain’s hard paste.

The Chamberlain pattern book describe it as ‘Dejeuney shape, fine old Japan pattern same as Roses’ – a reference to John Rose, founding owner of the Coalport factory, which had a similar Imari pattern.

‘The design was originally much used on Japanese porcelains of the 1690-1720 period, hence the use by Chamberlain of the description ‘old Japan’,’ Geoffrey Godden explained in his book, Chamberlain-Worcester Porcelain 1788-1852.

Lord Nelson visited Worcester in August 1802 and inspected the Chamberlain factory and shop, accompanied by Lady Hamilton. Over the factory door was ‘thrown a triumphal arch of laurel,’ according to a contemporary account quoted by Godden. ‘For more than an hour his Lordship viewed with the minutest attention every department of this highly improved works, so much the object of general curiosity; and on inspection of the superb assortment of china at the shop in the High Street, honoured Messrs. Chamberlain by declaring that … he had seen none equal to the productions of their manufactory, in testimony of which he left a very large order of china, to be decorated with this arms, insignia, etc.’

Godden notes that Chamberlain did not write up the account for the order until January 1806, after Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, so it is doubtful that ‘His Lordship ever saw the finished service.’