Neat vintage souvenir china piece for the Philadelphia Zoo in Pennsylvania. Great to have found this in its original metal stand which makes it particularly fun on display. This old china piece is porcelain (it is translucent) and is the size of a butter dish, inserted into a wire metal stand with an ornate curlicue curved edging and an adjustable rectangular wire stand piece which folds flat so you could hang this on a wall in addition to standing it in a display cupboard.

Basically round, old souvenir china piece in stand measures about 3 11/16 inches greatest width and stands up to 3 3/4 inches in height when you adjust the stand to show this as tall as possible. In our images we've shown this with the stand putting the china dish at a better lower angle for photographs, with the full piece standing at its lowest height of about 2 1/2 inches (frankly, we think this is the safest height/set-up for display; while you can make this stand taller it seems a more fragile/precarious way to display this and we are afraid it could fall over). You can take the china dish out of the stand by lifting a circular piece on the backside but we have not attempted to do this because we didn't want to risk bending the metal or perhaps chipping the dish in the process. The china dish can rotate/move within the frame, so it may become rotated during the shipping process, but if it does, you can easily move it to where you want without taking the dish out of the frame. The china piece itself has a scalloped edge and a lowered center section.

Terrific old graphic look on the front side with iridescent coloring to the china around the edges and a multi-color two picture look separated by the banner which states "Philadelphia Zoo". Above the banner is a picture of a Bactrian Camel (as labelled) with a similar picture of a Zebra below the banner (as labelled). The images/décor are all lined in black with coloring added within and around that. The backside has the original paper foil label stating "A Quality Product Made in Japan". From this and the coloring and style of the piece, we believe this Philadelphia Zoo souvenir would have been made in the 1950s or 1960s, although we can't guarantee that. It is definitely not a new or current zoo souvenir piece.

We've provided 8 images to show from all sides and close-ups of the graphics and the paper label. The camera lighting creates white "hot spot" reflections on the china and particularly on the shiny foil label, so we shot the label both with and without the camera light on. Please use the zoom feature to examine closely.

Very nice usable and collectible condition. There are no major chips, cracks or crazing to the china, or bends to the frame. As you can see in the images, there are some tiny chips on the backside of the china on the edge on which the piece would sit if it were lying flat, but these could have been made in manufacture since these souvenir pieces were cheaply made. There do not appear to be any chips around the outer edge of the china piece. We don't see any scratches on the topside, but there are a few dots, a brown wear dot/stain, and other tiny wear, but nothing bad. The black line scroll work surrounding the colored center images does not have bold black lines but more a worn old black line look, but we're not sure that this is paint wear but perhaps a design feature to make this piece have an older aged look as made, or perhaps again this is an example of the cheaper manufacturing process, we don't know. The foil paper label has a bit of wear, but not bad.

Nice addition to any collection of vintage zoo souvenir items, or one related to the Philadelphia Zoo or the city of Philadelphia or PA in specific. Would also make an interesting addition to a grouping of collectibles related to camels or zebras.