Thursday, July 13, 2017

One for Each Hand

I am told that a collection isn't a collection until there are three.
Though there are only two, I consider this my collection.
They are very old English teacups sitting in their bowls.

For those of you teacup affectionados
I am sharing the underside of the cups
and the cups and bowls separately.

From researching I have read that when the
English first started making teaware their only examples
were Asian.  The Asian teacup did not have a handle,
so these cups do not have handles.
Fairly quickly they found that adding a handle
would help not burn fingers and a handle was added.

So though there are only two, one for each hand;
I will be looking for more.
Yes, this is my collection
and a girl cannot have too many teacups
can she?

Linking to Bernideen at http://blog.bernideens.com/

9 comments:

Time Traveling in Costume said...

That green one is beautiful. Fortunately I drink my tea quite cool, so these would work for me. :)
Val

parTea lady said...

That's a lovely teacup collection. It is possible for an old girl like me to have too many teacups, since I'm trying to downsize. ;-)

Jeanie said...

Interesting story -- I didn't know that about the handles but it makes perfect sense. You'll laugh but the photo I love most is the one of the cup upside down -- the pattern of the saucer looking like a star is just lovely!

Louca por porcelana said...

Beautiful teacups!

Bernideen said...

Dear Marilyn:
Those are lovely teacups and transferware always looks so pretty and striking. Lovely!

Margie said...

Such pretty teacups! I especially like the blue one with birds. I concur that you can never have too many teacups!

Mary said...

I didn't know the handle story Marilyn, thanks for sharing. I have a set of two non-handled cups and saucers purchased in Thailand, they are pretty but I never use them.

I hope you can find more for your 'collection - meanwhile, like many of us, I'm still trying to downsize on the china in the cottage - just have too much and no place to store. So what did I do Friday? Bought two more bowls at Anthropologie of course!

Tracy said...

These are sooo lovely, Marilyn! It's interesting the tea cups before handles. I saw/read somewhere that in European tea taking, it was very much the fashion for cups without handles for quite a while. You had to hold the cups just so--to prevent burning oneself, of course--but it was also beneficial for showing off a woman's delicate, white write, forearm... :) Thank goodness for handles coming into fashion, though. I'd rather be safe than elegant... LOL!

Adrienne said...

I love your teacups! No, a girl can't have too many - unless she has two bins full in her garage and doesn't even remember what she has! That would be me. One of these days I'll get them out and choose what to keep and pass the others along.
~Adrienne~