Your Favourite Mugs

A little while ago, we asked you to send us photos of your favourite mug and tell us why that's the mug you go for when you need that all-important reviving, comforting cup of tea.

To finish off our 'Two Weeks of Tea', we're going to show you some of our favourites:

Thankyou to Rafi-Lopez for this Mexican mug given as a gift to a French lady who since living in England has adopted the custom of afternoon tea at 4pm. Excellent stuff.


Another very international mug here from mais_oui, although this time it's also a very political one. It was one of many sold in the 1980s to raise money to support Nicaragua's FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), a revolutionary party who seized power, only to be toppled by Regan's administration. Along with the politics, mais_oui tells us that it is also a familiar object from her childhood, combining 'domesticity and global politics'.

This is clearly a well-loved and well-used mug, a little bashed about but loved nonetheless. mmbrook8 tells us that it is from her undergraduate college, which she likes to have a little reminder of wherever she goes. The mug is an excellent way to do this. And functional too - what more could you want?



This is a very intriguing contribution from lolamaxx. It was purchased at Dickens' World in Chatham Maritime, Kent. The mind boggles at what that might involve.

We would like to say a big thankyou to everyone who has contributed photographs, we are glad that it is not just us who views our mugs as old friends.
See everyone's contributions on our Flickr group here.

That is it for our photo events, we hope that you have enjoyed sharing some of the things which make up your homes.

Our blog will be drawing to a close soon but fear not - we have one last mystery object up our sleeve. Look out for it soon, we think it might be the most difficult yet...

Royal weddings: souvenir mugs

Royal souvenir mugs are one of the ways in which the English have made tea drinking their own. Royal marriages, coronations and even divorces and deaths are all marked by a proliferation of porcelain.

No sooner had William and Kate announced their engagement on 16th November 2010 than the rush to produce memorabilia began. Many producers already had designs ready and waiting in anticipation of such an announcement, and in some cases mugs were available almost overnight.

As a museum of the home, the Geffrye’s collections reflect the nation’s tendency to commemorate royal events with homewares. We were allowed into the museum stores to investigate some of the objects from their collection of royal memorabilia.

Royal memorabilia in the Geffrye Museum stores

This beaker commemorates the coronation of George V in 1911, and includes a local commemorative inscription, in which Bethnal Green is represented as a rural idyll.

Coronation mug of George V, 1911. Geffrye Museum, London

Coronation mug of George V, 1911. Geffrye Museum, London

Many would say you can’t have tea without biscuits – never fear, the royal souvenir market has that covered too, as this commemorative biscuit tin, from the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 demonstrates.

Biscuit tin commemorating coronation of Elizabeth II, 1953. Geffrye Museum, London.

One could have enjoyed dunking a nice biscuit from one’s coronation tin (preferably something involving chocolate) into one’s coronation mug.

Coronation mug of Elizabeth II, 1953. Geffrye Museum, London

Memorabilia of less popular royals is rarer and therefore more valuable today: mugs marking the coronation of the philandering, gambling George IV in 1820, for example, can fetch £3,500. Far more numerous were mugs marking his death, worth around £700 today.

While royal memorabilia was not common until Victorian times, its roots can be traced back to the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), when royal pomp was encouraged after eleven years of royal exile following the execution of Charles I in 1649. The ceramics collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum includes a colourful little mug bearing a picture of Charles II. Tea at this time was hugely expensive, and this cup was probably meant for display or for drinking strong ale.

From one of the earliest royal commemorative mugs back to the most recent, we're betting that in the long run, these mugs accidentally depicting Harry alongside Kate rather than William will turn out to be the most sought-after souvenirs of the occasion.

Manufacturers of William and Kate mugs do not just have their eyes on the British market, but the international market. Memorabilia connected with the British royal family is popular the world over, especially in the USA.

As Asda put it: ‘Nothing says congratulations like your face on a mug.’

It’s just not official unless we can drink tea out of it.

World at Home for the Family

Lots of pictures for you today! Tuesday and Wednesday saw our The World at Home family days take over the Geffrye Museum, and I think we can safely say that a good time was had by all. Here is a sample of what went on:

Scents of the World - making pomanders to take home

Mixing fragrances in Scents of the World

Tales from the Deep - handling 300 year old tea bowls and saucers (lucky children - we haven't been allowed to do this!)

Tales from the Deep - retelling the story of the Ca Mau shipwreck using shadow puppets. Truly impressive.

 

Tales from the Deep - concentrating hard at the OHP

 

Lunchtime at the museum in the sunshine

 

Company's Coming - baking Turkish biscuits. They smelt amazing!

  

Company's Coming - tasty biscuit mixture

 

Company's Coming - the finished product!



Printed Patterns - making prints using fabric paint



Printed Patterns - even our youngest visitors joined in



Printed Patterns - some of the finished prints. They will all be stitched together to make a banner

Fantastic Fans - remember we told you about Japanese uchiwa? Some of the children at yesterday's family day made their own to take home with them



Another Fantastic Fan

Tea Leaf Reading - enjoying a nice cup of Early Grey

Tea Leaf Reading - finding out what different symbols in the tea leaves mean

 There are more photos over on our Flickr site. Were you there? See if you can find yourself!

Two Weeks of Tea

Update: We've decided to give you some extra time to get your favourite mug photos in - the photo event will now end on Tuesday 3rd May and that's when we'll be posting our favourites.

For the next two weeks, the World at Home blog will be running under the theme of tea!

Drinking tea is often associated with the English, yet it's something which is not originally English at all, which makes it the perfect way to explore international influences in the home.

If you want to find out more about where tea comes from and how it ended up in English homes, look out for our Digital Story called 'The History of Tea in English Homes' which will appear on the Geffrye Museum's website in May.

Your Favourite Mug

As part of our 'two weeks of tea', we've decided to run another photographic event!

Drinking tea is often considered a very 'English' past time, but we know that not only does tea get taken in many different ways all across the UK, but people from all over the world drink it too. After all, the English weren't the first people to drink tea.

Once tea started to be imported into Britain in the late 1600s, people here took to it very quickly, but drinking tea meant they needed to have something to drink it from. As well as tea, ships started bringing in the delicate china it was drunk out of - first tea bowls, then tea cups! Now, the range of things you can buy for drinking your tea out of is huge, and cups and mugs are made from many different materials.

We want to see what it is you drink your tea out of. Maybe a picture of your favourite mug or tea cup, or the one you use most often. Maybe you have one that was imported, just like they were first imported to Britain from China.

Once again, you can send us your photos by adding them to our Flickr group. Once you've uploaded your images to your Flickr account, join our group and click 'add something' to contribute your images. Tell us all about your mug in the photo's description.

This way, we can collect your images and make our own online gallery of favourite mugs.

Here are a couple of our favourite mugs to get you started:

"My mum bought this mug for me after I got my GCSE results. I'd been really ill during the exams and was so worried about how the results would come out! They turned out all right and this mug helps to cheer me up when I'm worried about something."

"Yes, this is actually a mug! I saw this camera lens mug on the internet and wanted it for a long time before my boyfriend bought it for me as a Christmas present. I love it because it looks so real, people always give me a funny look when I start pouring boiling water into it. Plus, it matches my real camera lenses."

You don't need to be a professional photographer, or even have a camera - a mobile phone shot will do, or maybe you could even draw us a picture! We want to get as many people as possible exploring their home for international influences, and then let you share them with people all over the world! If you can't get us a picture, tell us about your international objects in the blog comments.

Our favourite images and/or stories from the group will be posted here on the blog next Saturday (30th April). Check back to see if yours makes it!

Tales from the Deep

On both of our Stories of the World Family Days next week (Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th April), families can take part in our Tales from the Deep storytelling activity.

Tales from the Deep is based on the story of a shipwreck discovered by fishermen in 1998, off the Ca Mau peninsular in Vietnam. The wreck was of a Chinese ship known as a junk, which sank in about 1725, laden with cargo destined for the European market. There was great demand for Chinese porcelain in Europe at this time, especially to equip people to drink the newly fashionable tea.

The junk was carrying thousands of pieces of Chinese porcelain, probably ferrying them between Canton (Guangzhou) and the Dutch trading post of Batavia (now Jakarta). It is clear that much of this porcelain was destined for sale at European ports such as London or Amsterdam; some pieces are decorated with elements of traditional Dutch fishing villages, but executed in the Chinese style. As well as this intermingling of decorative influences, there were objects of European form, such as beer mugs.



Saucer, c.1725 (c) Geffrye Museum, London

Tea bowl, c.1725 (c) Geffrye Museum, London

The tea bowl and saucer pictured above were probably made in the city of Jingdezhen, China, which is famous for its porcelain production. Their decoration shows a scene in a garden with a pavilion and three figures, a man in military clothing walking with a woman, and a man in scholarly official robes emerging from behind the pavilion.

After 250 years on the seabed, much of this cargo has now been recovered. In fact, you can see some of it on display in the Geffrye’s 1745 parlour.

Even more excitingly, families taking part in our Tales of the Deep activity will be able to handle a tea bowl recovered from the wreck. Children can then make their own shadow puppets to retell the ship’s story.

Find more information about the tea bowl and saucer pictured in the Geffrye’s collections online here.

Mystery Object No. 1 - the Solution

The waiting is over! Thankyou to all of you who guessed, and apologies for driving one or two of you a little mad. We can now reveal the true identity of our mystery object: congratulations to those who guessed it was a tea cup!

(c) Geffrye Museum, London

One of the things we are currently in the process of doing is putting together a digital story on the history of tea drinking in English homes (available on the Geffrye Museum website from early May), so we will be looking at a lot of teacups in the next few weeks!

This one is part of a set manufactured by Royal Worcester in 1876, and is decorated with the ‘Variety’ pattern, which includes a scroll pattern, stylised flowers and a bamboo design.

The decoration is influenced by both Japanese and Middle Eastern designs, and is our first example of how styles and techniques from across the globe have appeared in English homes.