One of life’s pleasures is the daily process of choosing a cup from which to enjoy my morning coffee. I am now at my mother’s house in Portland, Oregon. She shares this enjoyment and is surely a prime source thereof: she has a cup collection [indeed, she has many collections, but that is another story]. Today I woke early and, as usual, savored selecting my cup. After an initial scan of her array, I considered first the white one of medium size, with a faintly inscribed lilac-colored iris on its side. I looked next at and thought about the tall, delicate one with two regal Siamese cats on it. The cup itself looked a bit regal, with its elegantly curving handle. But in the end, I chose one I’d bought for my mother in 1994, when we were both reeling from my father’s death. It has a white interior and framing, but most of the tall, slender, fine-bone china cup is covered in a painting of Butchart Gardens (in the Canadian city of Victoria, where I’d gone for an Ethno-biology conference). The image is done in impressionistic style, with an additional strip of the greens and reds of the painting flowing down the mostly white and beautifully curving handle. It’s really lovely.
Another favorite is one we bought in England, on a visit to a family friend we’d known in my youth. This cup also has a white interior, but it’s a short one, made delicate by the outward curve at the bottom. It is covered with lovely flowers portrayed in an English garden scene. Sometimes I choose a solider cup of medium size, one that I bought for my mother two summers ago on our trip to Alaska with her now deceased partner and his eldest daughter. Its main color is purplish, with an iris as the central motif. It was not expensive, only $5, but for some reason I like it better than the bigger, more expensive, and even more delicate one I bought in duplicate, for both of us. That one is both tall and wide, mostly white, with scattered single flowers of a kind I can’t remember.
These are the ones I usually choose from the large and varied collection she has displayed in her cupboard. She also has as many more stored in her attic, and she switches them around from time to time, but these that I have described seem always to be available when I come.
At my own home, I have a smaller collection, only the ones I particularly like. One favorite that I found in my goods when we unpacked our 30 year storage unit in 2009 is a short, globular, transparent cup with the Earth etched on it. I look at the various places I’ve lived, turning the cup from side to side to look at Indonesia, at the Pacific Northwest, at Turkey, now at New York. I got this cup at a ‘swap meet’ (where people bring their stuff to sell, rather like an estate sale, actually!) in Hawaii in the early 1980s. Another favorite was recently acquired, on my trip to Cameroon last May. The flight stopped in Turkey (not exactly on the way!), where I had grown up (in the late 1950s). I found a strangely curved cup with an abstract design portraying things Turkish. The whole cup curves outward, away from the handle; it reminds me of a pregnant woman. The motif includes among others, a woman with a headscarf and the word Istanbul in letters of various sizes and shapes so that it’s almost unrecognizable as a word—it’s definitely an unusual ‘souvenir cup’. Before this cup arrived on the scene, I liked to use a rough, cream-colored pottery one with a blue dragonfly etched on one side, left behind by the previous owners of our Etna home.
These are all used for coffee. I have others from which I choose if I’m making tea. Sometimes I choose a big globular pottery cup from CIFOR (my place of employment). This cup has a light brown or tannish color, with a big diagonal swath of light green across it and CIFOR written in small letters toward the bottom. It was designed by Dennis Dykstra, my much appreciated boss at the time (early 1990s) and a fellow Oregonian. It is a very Oregon type design (earthy, ‘green’), and always reminds me of my home state. I also have two real English tea cups of fine bone china—tall, delicate, set up a bit from a base, and with little matching lids. They even came with insert-able tea strainers! Both are mainly white, with outward curving lips and elegant S-shaped handles. One has a single red poppy prominent upon it; the other a pattern of small, light blue cornflowers. These two cups were very expensive (maybe $20 each?). I bought them in an airport, probably in Heathrow, but have used them now for a decade or two. For years, I had one in my office in Bogor (Indonesia), and one at home. Now they both sit in my cupboard in Etna, NY, available for use at any time; they are often used by guests who eschew caffeine at night. The last one I would mention is a big one I got from my mother in law, when she died. I had used and enjoyed it at her house whenever I went there. It is mainly white, but one side is covered with several big American flowers (dahlias among them); and the other side is covered with brightly colored vegetables (corn, tomato, and more). She got the cup from a seed company from which she had bought gardening supplies. I was happy to inherit it.
Who would imagine one could get so much recurrent pleasure from such mundane things!?