Lady Luck
From Mystic Tea Room
In this installment of "From the Land of Tea," we take a sneak-peek look at an upcoming page that will eventually be on display to the public. As a Patreon supporter, you have access to the page one full year before the public does.
- Patreon Release Date: December 21st, 2024.
- Public Release Date: December 21st, 2025.
Please tell your friends that they can subscribe to my Patreon stream for $8.00 per month:
To place this work in context, please read the following introductory pages
Lady Luck
These swirly-girly, gilded Queen Anne Lady Luck cups and saucers were made in England by Shore and Coggins from the late 1940s and through the late 1950s. Although they are decorated with playing cards, they are not actually tea leaf reading cups -- instead, like the similarly-decorated Cards and Dice cup and saucer made in Japan by Ucagco in 1946, they were marketed as hostess gifts for women who held card parties in their homes.
In this case, the game played was certainly bridge, which requires four players, making the use of the four card suits a natural design idea. (I mention this because some contemporary sellers try to promote antique Lady Luck tea ware as "poker sets," due to the popularity of poker at the present time -- however poker can be played by as few as 2 people for five card draw and as many as 8 for Texas Hold 'Em, and thus it is not customary to use the four suits motif to decorate poker-themed tableware.)
Each suit has the same card hands, but they are colour-coded to the suits: Blue for Hearts, Pink for Clubs, Green for Diamonds, and Yellow for Spades. On the rear of each cup is a Joker, and the top half of the Joker also appears inside each cup. The rims are gilded, the handles are ornate, and the shape of the cups is gently infolded, with wavy edges. The steep sides do not make these pieces ideal for tea leaf reading, but their beauty compensates for any awkwardness in that regard.
The fact that the cups are colour-coded and marked with suits that the professional reader has at least three ways of choosing the perfect cup for her sitter.
- Match by Topic: Choose Hearts for love questions, Clubs for health and travel matters, Diamonds for money and career issues, and Spades for legal matters or dealing with the dead.
- Match by Zodiac Sign: Hearts are Water, for Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces clients; Clubs are Fire, for Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius clients; Diamonds are Earth, for Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo clients; and Spades are Air, for Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini clients.
- Match the Client's Clothing: Choose from Blue, Pink, Green or Yellow to harmonize with the client's clothing and make her feel special and welcomed.
For those unfamiliar with English tableware, a cup and saucer pair is called a set, a cup and saucer pair with a matching small sandwich plate is called a trio, and a cup accompanied by a specially designed all-in-one saucer-and-plate is called a tea set.
As best i can determine, Lady Luck pieces were marketed as groups comprising all four suits -- either tea cup and saucer sets (8 pieces), tea sets (8 pieces), trios (12 pieces), or sandwich plates (4 pieces). Not all pieces are dated, but i have seen dates marked on the back that i think run from 1950 to 1959, and others tell me that have seen some dated back to just after World War Two.
One final note: When shopping for Queen Anne Lady Luck china online, avoid mis-matched sets, such as a Hearts cup with a Spades saucer. Sellers are often unaware that these are mismatches, and try to sell them at the same price that matched sets would bring, which is unfair to the buyer.
Because many years have passed since these pieces were made, it is now almost impossible to find complete arrays for sale, so i have given them identifiers based on the four suits.
- DIV-TLR-LLHS Hearts Cup and Saucer Set
- DIV-TLR-LLHR Hearts Cup, Saucer, and Plate Trio
- DIV-TLR-LLHT Hearts Tea Set
- DIV-TLR-LLHP Hearts Sandwich Plate
- DIV-TLR-LLCS Clubs Cup and Saucer Set
- DIV-TLR-LLCR Clubs Cup, Saucer, and Plate Trio
- DIV-TLR-LLCT Clubs Tea Set
- DIV-TLR-LLCP Clubs Sandwich Plate
- DIV-TLR-LLDS Diamonds Cup and Saucer Set
- DIV-TLR-LLDR Diamond Cup, Saucer, and Plate Trio
- DIV-TLR-LLDT Diamonds Tea Set
- DIV-TLR-LLDP Diamonds Sandwich Plate
- DIV-TLR-LLSS Spades Cup and Saucer Set
- DIV-TLR-LLSR Spades Cup, Saucer, and Plate Trio
- DIV-TLR-LLST Spades Tea Set
- DIV-TLR-LLSP Spades Sandwich Plate
catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room
Special thanks to my dear husband and creative partner nagasiva yronwode for illustrations, scans, and clean-ups.