Arabia Botnia

I picked up the Arabia Botnia part setting at Auction yesterday, although it was in worse condition than I first imagined - and had to discard about 1/3 of it, but the remaining came up stunningly after a clean.

The cups especially are such a lovely shape. It didn't occur to me before either, that this was a handpainted, not a transfer pattern - which always adds to the beauty of pieces.

I haven't been able to find a production date, but I'm guessing early 1960's - before handpainting whole dinner sets became too expensive.

With all patterned China, you don't get the full effect of the design until you see a number of pieces together, and Botnia sure makes for a stunning design.