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Friday Slide Show: A Coalport Top Hat
3 January 2025
One used to dress to the nines for New Year's Eve. Top hat and tails. Furs and high heels. What else would you wear to clink glasses of champagne held by their thin stems and kiss the New Year hello?
That perhaps was the inspiration for this small Coalport top hat upended to provide a vase for some roses, all in bone china. An elegant little nothing that has survived nearly 100 years by now.
Coalport made a number of variations of flower bouquets about this size, which is just 2.25 inches tall. A fellow named John Rose, of all things, founded the company in 1795.
It's next to worthless, our appraiser told us when we were cleaning out the family home. Under $20. And we might have been well advised to leave it behind for the scavenger.
But we couldn't.
Flowers wilt. But not porcelain roses. Top hats leak when irrigating. But not a Coalport top hat.
Our little piece of bone china is a small (even deceptive) argument against the obvious. And as such, a reminder that you don't have to settle for anything less than a chance to make things different.
So we took it home. Where we've taken it to heart.
