“Fairyland Lustre” Coffee Cup and Saucer, c. 1920

Invented by Daisy Makeig-Jones, the visionary auteur of women's professional advancement at Wedgwood, Fairyland Lusterware served as a visually spectacular, fantastical escape for a generation emerging from the horrors of the Great War. By the roaring 1920s, this exuberant ceramics program was a bona fide phenomenon, capturing the imagination of the Great Gatsby era.

The coffee cup and saucer is an extremely rare form within the Fairyland corpus. In this example, the motif, titled "Nizami," was created as a direct homage to the celebrated 12th-century Persian poet, drawing its exquisite visual details from the 16th-century illuminated manuscripts commissioned by the Shah.

Fairyland and Makeig-Jones were the subject of a Curious Objects Podcast interview with Bailey Tichenor.

Reference:
Una Des Fontaines, Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre: The Work of Daisy Makeig-Jones, 1975, Born-Hawes: Oxford.