A set of 19 circular discs, engraved with the cipher ‘CR’ under a crown in the centre, within a border with four ornamental cartouches and with the royal arms on the reverse.

Perhaps identifiable as the contents of the ‘card box in Japanese lacquer, containing seven smaller boxes, with thirty-six dozen and three mother-of-pearl counters’, included in the Queen Charlotte sale (Christie’s 1819A, 7 May, lot 117), or the box containing 124 mother-of-pearl counters bearing the Queen’s cipher sold in the Duke of Sussex’s sale, Christie’s 1845 (24 July, lot 177).

Queen Charlotte’s evenings were often spent with the King and members of the court listening to music and playing cards, usually commerce or ‘whisk’, on which occasions the Chinese mother-of-pearl gaming counters, engraved with the royal arms and Queen Charlotte’s cipher, were probably used.

Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004 and Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume III.