Vintage Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Plate – Head of the Commonwealth, Limited Edition 60, Twelve Realm Shields, Mercian England 1977

Most 1977 jubilee plates were made by the hundred thousand. This one belongs to a limited edition of sixty — hand-numbered 22 on the reverse — commissioned by the Commemorative Collectors Society, the UK's dedicated society for commemorative ware founded in 1972, as plate No. 8 in its series of twelve, designed by A. Kitson Towler DFA and made by Mercian China of Burton-upon-Trent.

Where other plates celebrated the Queen of the United Kingdom, this one honours her other title: Head of the Commonwealth. At the centre, a colour photographic portrait — pale gown, blue Garter sash, pearls — ringed in gold lettering, H.M. Queen Elizabeth II · 1952–1977 · Head of the Commonwealth, within a wreath of golden oak leaves. Around the rim, linked by a blue ribbon naming each realm, runs a heraldic tour of the 1977 Commonwealth: Britain, Australia's black swan and Southern Cross, the Bahamas' sunrise ship, Barbados, Canada's maple shield, Fiji, Grenada's nutmeg, Jamaica, Mauritius, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea's bird of paradise — eleven crowned shields with St Edward's Crown presiding at the top. It maps, in effect, the 56,000-mile Commonwealth tour the Queen made that jubilee year.

A generous 11 inches across with a gilt edge — the largest royal plate in this shop — it hangs as a genuine rarity rather than a common souvenir: the numbered backstamp — A Limited Edition of 60, of which this is No. 22 — does the arguing for it.

For the limited-edition collector, the heraldry and Commonwealth-history minded, or as the scarce companion to the mass-issued jubilee plates of 1977.