Saucer info from the Portage Museum files

I will just add any info about saucer numbers in here for those interested and add more as I come across it.

4610 with 3613 Breakfast Cup [Well done Jeremy!]

4612 goes with 3614

4619 goes with 3610 and 3635 [and replaces 4615]

4624 goes with 3624 and 3622, also 3641 and 3610

4631 goes with 3638

4650 same shape as 4050 goes with 3642

Thanks Ev.

I have noticed some odd combinations of cups and saucer which I would not personally choose to put together, but having seen them in matching patterns have accepted that they were sold this way new.

Some of the Ambrico fits were sloppy but in the late 1950s and early 1960s Crown Lynn got it right with beautifully matched pairings.

They lost it again later on, particularly after the introduction of the robust yet aesthetically unpleasing 4619 saucer, which saw the end of the elegant 4610 jumbo vit coupe saucer, and the stylish 4615.

The 3618 reduced footring coffee can on the lightweight 4610 saucer is not quite as pleasing to the eye as the 782/792 Cook & Serve pairing, but the lightweight 3618 and the clunky 4619 are an awful combo.

The 3610 tall coffee cup looks wrong to me on both the 4619 and the 4624, but I have yet to identify its original saucer. As the 3610 was the first four digit vit cup I expect its saucer to be an existing three digit one, but maybe the 4611 (recently added to the gallery I see, as a definition) which has not been identified yet. The gallery definition refers to the 770, which number would have been allotted at a later time to an earthenware oatmeal bowl..
[Explanation for cross out above: I misread the gallery definition for 4611: it never was a saucer! Even so I still think what I have written below about number reuse still applies.]
[Monday:] I will try a 3610 on a "3615" saucer as I have just bought on trademe a 1948-1955 saucer which appears to be the same shape, thus would have existed before the 3610. I may receive it in the coming week but will probably not get to photograph it until next weekend. I just tried a 3610 on a "3615" and the footring appears to be too small: I think the cup is riding on the sides of the well. Will try it on my new saucer when that arrives.

I have to rethink my saucer combos as new numbers appear.

One other thing your Portage research is achieving is to show the extent to which shape numbers were reused, and thus why the three digit galleries look in such chronological disarray. As items became obsolete the numbers were reused with different shapes.

A quick look at the gallery shows Ambrico shapes at the start suggesting that the three digit galleries SHOULD BE CHRONOLOGICAL and then it goes a bit haywire. I hope that one day we find that shapes without numbers actually had numbers but as the shapes became redundant the numbers were reused. This could explain the castware coronation cup, the Empire Games cup, and the other unnumbered Tobys, for example.

As much as I have long since tired of museum research I envy you the discoveries you have made already at Portage and those doubtless yet to be made. I trust
Portage appreciates the value you are adding to their collections with the work you are doing. If Portage ever gets to the situation of establishing a display of all its wares, at least all shapes by number, I'd feel compelled to help out filling gaps.

I haven't worked through all the implications of your post yet but will do some time.