Time for tea cups IV - grandmothers' cups

I'm getting to the tail end (I won't say 'dregs'!) now of this tea cup thing.

Here are some I have inherited from my grandmothers.

These were my paternal grandmother's everyday tea cups. How I loved to gaze at the birds when I was a child and give them all names. I would drink milk out of one at tea-time on Sundays.

Tea always meant bridge rolls with cucumber, egg and cress; wafer-thin bread and butter; toasted tea-cakes with apricot jam; 'fancy' shop-bought iced cakes; and tinned fruit with evaporated milk or a wobbly, pink rabbit made from Symington's Table Cream. The bone china cups are unmarked but my grandfather's large extended family lived in Stoke-on-Trent, so it's very likely it was a wedding present in the 1920s and came from one of the famous potteries.

The hand-painted 'cherry' cups were from my maternal grandmother's second-best crockery collection, which included a dinner service too. Made by Barker Brothers/Tudor Ware in creamy stoneware, this was a popular design of the time, which my grandmother collected for her 'bottom drawer' during her long engagement in the 1920s. I think they were bought from Boots or Timothy White's (possibly Woolworths) in Basingstoke.

Tea time at Grannie's was always thick slices of home-cooked ham with salad from the garden; home-made scones and strawberry jam; home-baked fruit cake and Victoria sponge and sometimes a lardy cake or some giant macaroons from the baker's. With Grannie's special treacle tart and custard to finish off with, it's a wonder any of us could lever ourselves from our chairs afterwards.
I've added to this set over the years at boot-sales and from eBay and until recently (when the attrition rate began to seem unsustainable for such a vintage range) it has been in everyday use here, too.

Time for tea cups III - roses and ribbons

Whoever it was who got me started on this is probably regretting it now!

(If tea cups aren't your thing, please bear with me while I get this out of my system . . .)

This is my third tea cups post and the second devoted to Foley Peacock Art Pottery.

This little collection features roses and ribbons.

This one is an impostor - it isn't Foley, it's Heathcote China (and rather ironically has the word 'copyright' on the backstamp). I think we know where they got their ideas from, though. I love the zigzag stems on these roses.

Sadly, I only have plates and saucers in this ribbony design.

This one is a different shape - one more usually associated with Foley's more 'classical' designs. And indeed these roses have a more traditional feel to them than some of the others here.

This one is Foley, but it's not Peacock Art pottery, the backstamp showing the Staffordshire knot (note to Sherry - I'll email you all the backstamps soon!). The cup and saucer are moulded, with slightly scalloped, gilded edges, but the teapot is plain and does have the Peacock Art Pottery stamp (and is the same shape as the smaller, rosy teapot above), so clearly the transfer designs were shared between different ranges. Not sure what Foley had against the Welsh, but there are no leeks or daffodils in amongst these English roses, Scots thistles and Irish shamrocks!

OK, that's it for now. A few oddments to follow during the week and then I'll get my head round some book reviews.

They're not tea cups

. . . so they didn't qualify for today's tea cup post.

But it seemed churlish not to share them with my fellow Glasgow Style enthusiasts simply because they are the wrong shape and don't have handles. I passionately believe in equal rights for tea plates.

So here are some more George Logan designs for Foley Peacock Pottery c.1901-05.

Well, they're mine so I'm biased, but I think they're gorgeous.

Time for tea cups II

I promise not to turn Musings into one of those 'hey, look at all my lovely stuff' blogs. Really, truly, I do.
But last week's Tea Cup post seemed to go down rather well in various corners of the world, so please turn away now if you came here for bookish stuff and/or island pics.

Here are some more of my tea cups!

Today's little lot are all from Foley Peacock Pottery (a trading name of Wileman & Co, Stoke-on-Trent, which later changed its name to Shelley), from between around 1900 and 1905.

The first two pictured above were designed by George Logan 1866—1939, who was one of the most prolific designers for Wylie & Lochhead, a Glasgow department store that popularized the Glasgow Style of the British Arts and Crafts Movement - the most influential exponent of which was, of course, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Logan may well have designed some of the others here, too, but I haven't found any documentary evidence of the designs. They all have that Glasgow feel to them, anyway.

The first two (saucerless) cups I acquired caught my eye when I was in my teens at an antiques fair at Wellington College, which I'd cycled to, just to see what an antiques fair was like (I'm so ancient that such things were a whole new concept at the time!).

I paid 40p each for the cups. I loved their brilliant opalescent whiteness, the characteristic shades of green and pink in Logan's stylised rose design, and of course their 'Mackintoshy' aura.

I've picked up lots more over the years and in fact have more plates now than cups, and more tiny coffee cups than tea cups. The china is so thin that it's rather scary to drink out of them - and many of these, being 'rescue cups', are not fit to use anyway. But on occasions when there have been no children at large I have taken tea from some of my Logan Foley cups.

They absolutely demand something fragrant like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong and only the very thinnest and most delicate of biscuits as accompaniment (nearly said 'to dunk' there - heaven forfend!). And it's true what they say - tea tastes so much better out of bone china. Something I tend to forget as I gulp Yorkshire Tea from my pint-size 'work mug'.


So, what do you think? All comments most welcome.

(PS Apologies for the poor quality of these photos. My happy snappy PowerShot is better at views than it is at this kind of thing and the big grown-up Nikons are out of the house today.)

Time for tea cups

At a slight tangent from the usual bookish Musings - here are some bits of old china.

I have been promising Kim from The Last House in America that I would post some pics so we can have a little tea cup comparing/admiring session.

Of course books and tea cups are two of the most essential components of one of the finest pleasures in life - the Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (the other component being, of course, a biscuit or a piece of cake, but we won't mention those in the interests of waistlines and general decorum).

Apart from a few family heirlooms and the proper grown-up 'best tea service' (rarely used), my tea cup collection falls neatly into two camps. I don't have time today to take pics of the others, so for now I give you what I think of as my 'sprigged muslin' collection.

These are mostly early- to mid-Victorian and hand-painted (some over a transfered background), and they put me in mind of a Janeite world of sprigged dress fabrics and the genteel partaking of tea in the best parlour. Or on the lawn with strawberries.

As I have neither the resources nor the inclination to spend my days wafting around proper antique shops, these are all very much Rescue Cups - snatched from the jaws of destruction or neglect (or indeed antique dealers) at boot sales, charity shops, village fetes and the odd low-end antique fair. Like Rescue Dogs, most have a few little defects but nothing that can't be overlooked, and bags of character.

I bought my first one for 50p with my student grant in Westgate on Sea, Kent in 1979. At that price I naturally had to think long and hard before closing the deal, but I did and it was well worth it - partly for the bafflement it afforded my flatmates.

I've taken a few of these photos today but the rest are 'some I did earlier' - in fact during the big sorting-out session which preceded my last house move a couple of years ago.