Passionate About Florals

Romantic, exuberant, beautiful, feminine, floral. These are just some of the descriptions purchasers worldwide apply to their favourite brand of bone china tableware and gifts – Royal Albert.

Inspired by the English country garden and the national flower, the rose – its quintessentially English grace, elegance and romance accounts for Royal Albert’s timeless popularity.

Today Royal Albert’s impressively elegant portfolio continues to feature the bone china tableware and giftware with floral hues and flowing curves that have captivated audiences across the globe for over a century.

A History of Quality

The story of Royal Albert stretches back over 100 years. Whilst the Royal Albert brand was created in 1904, its roots are to be found in the Albert Works, built in 1896. The Albert Works commemorated the birth of Prince Albert in 1895, who was named in memory of his great-grandfather, the most famous of Victorian Alberts.

The Albert Works was owned by Thomas Wild and his sons who specialised in affordable tea, breakfast and dessert wares with floral designs. They built up a reputation of producing beautiful china tea and breakfast sets and firmly established the Royal Albert brand.

English bone china was admired for its lightness, translucency and its soft subtle almost pearly white quality. Much approved of by the tea-party hostess of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

"the tea-cups are particularly fine-lipped,
a feature much loved by the ladies"

1898 comments from a travelling reporter for the Pottery Gazette

1904 Advertisement from the Pottery Gazette

Royal Distinction

The Royal Albert brand enjoys the distinction of two "Royal Warrants."

A Royal Warrant is bestowed upon people or companies who have regularly supplied members of the Royal Family with goods or services. It is regarded as a mark of supreme excellence and quality which cannot, be bought or sold.

The World's Best Selling China Pattern

Designed by Harold Holdcroft in 1962, Old Country Roses was inspired by a typical English country garden with flowers in bloom and is recognized by its signature clusters of roses in deep red, bright pink and warm yellow, offset by brilliant stippled gold rims and accents. Made from pure white bone china, the pattern features a flamboyant, curvaceous fluted shape, with twisting, curling handles.

Old Country Roses is appreciated around the world and enjoys and ardent following of loyal consumers, making it the world's best selling china pattern.