The Museum of Fortune Telling Tea Cups and Saucers

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Welcome to the Museum of Fortune Telling Tea Cups and Saucers!

This online museum is an extension of a real, physical museum that houses hundreds of fortune telling cups from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. More than just a colourful gallery of detailed images of dozens of fortune teller's tea cups and saucers, this museum also houses factual information about tea leaf reading cups, including patent drawings for a divination cups, instructional pamphlets that accompanied divination cup and saucer sets, books about tasseomancy, and historical overviews of the designers and manufacturers of tea leaf readers' cups.

Please begin your visit to my tea cup museum visit with this disclaimer: The divination cups and saucers you will see here may -- or may not -- be for sale at this or any other time, so please do not contact me with inquiries about buying or selling fortune teller's tea cups. As a museum, this a place in which to enjoy some beautiful things and learn about their history. It is a virtual tour of my own personal collection, accumulated over the course of 55 years ... and still on-growing.

SITE NAVIGATION

  • To help navigate this site, you may click on links via the Directory that appears at top left of every page.
  • Right below the Directory is a link to the Main Page -- the home or top page of the entire site.
  • Right below the Main Page link is the Community Portal, which may help put you in touch with others who read tea leaves.

TEA CUP TERMINOLOGY

In order to understand what you are looking at, here are some common terms used when describing tea sets.

  • Airbrushed: A pattern applied by means of a airbrush and stencils is called "airbrushed."
  • Bone China A type of porcelain developed in England in which calcined cattle bones were added to raw clay to create a more delicate and translucent type of ceramic.
  • Cabinet Cup: A cabinet cup is one that has been deigned to be collected as a souvenir or commemorative gift; the term also is used to describe any very fancy cup from which one does not drink, but which is housed in a collection, on display.
  • China: China and chinaware are old-fashioned terms for high-fired white porcelain, vitrified ware, or semi-vitreous articles.
  • Cup: A cup is a container from which one drinks. it may or may not have a handle; tea cups of the European style typically do have handles.
  • Earthenware: A low-fired form of pottery.
  • Glaze: A fine layer of glass which, after firing, seals and protects a piece of pottery; it may be decorated, coloured with minerals, or a clear coar applied over an underglaze that bears decorations.
  • Fired: Clay shaped that have been subjected to high heat in a kiln are said to have been fired. Low-fired clay results in a finished product called earthenware; high-fired clay may produce opaque or translucent wares called porcelain, stoneware, ironware, bone china, and so forth. Pottery may be fired twice -- once to concretize the clay and once to apply a glaze to it.
  • Hand-Painted: A hand-painted design is one that is applied by an artist using glazing paints.
  • Pattern: A pattern is a decorative design that is applied across a line of pottery goods in one or more shapes. The same pattern may be applied to a number of shapes.
  • Pottery: Articles made of clay that have been fired in a kiln are called "pottery." The word pottery is also used to refer to a company that makes ceramics for sale to the public; it may be called a pottery "company" or "factory" if it is large enough.
  • Saucer: A saucer is a small dish made to fit under a cup; typically the foot of the cup fits into a recessed area called the well of the saucer.
  • Set: A set consists of more than one item, sold together. Examples include a pair or duo (a cup and saucer), a trio (a cup, saucer, and small sandwich or cookie plate), or a tea set (a teapot, creamer, sugar, six cups, six saucers, and six sandwich or cookie plates).
  • Shape: A shape is the form of a cup, saucer, bowl, creamer, tea pot, plate, or dish. Generally speaking, most potteries have names for each of their shapes, although sometimes they only use numbers.
  • Transfer Pattern: A pattern applied by means of a decal before the final glaze is called a transfer. The generic term for a line of goods decorated in this way is "transferware."

Have fun!

catherine yronwode

The Mystic Tea Room

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