A Fun Little History Lesson

So, one Saturday morning, the girls and I were out looking for garage sales.  We love to find bargains!  We had visited a few and had not really found anything we couldn't live without, but we drove on to the last one on our list.  We almost didn't stop.  It appeared that there really wasn't too much there, and from what we could see from the car window, there wasn't much "girl stuff".  However, we did stop, and ended up with a fun little history lesson for our effort.

Sitting on a table full of tools and other unrelated items, we found a beautiful little treasure.

 

 

At first glance, we thought we had come across some gorgeous little tea cups.

 

Then we noticed this.

 

 

What?!?  We had never seen any tea cups like this.  After talking with the seller (who explained that he helped with estate sales, hence the odd assortment of findings at his sale) he told us that these were actually moustache cups.  A tea cup--but with an extra feature.  His explanation was pretty much what wikipedia had to say, so here it is.

 

Moustaches flourished throughout the Victorian era. Oftentimes, moustache wax was applied to the moustache to keep it nice and stiff, with every hair in place. And therein lay a problem that cropped up when steaming hot cups of tea or coffee were carried up to the mouth for sipping: the steam melted the wax and sent it right into the cup. Another problem soon became apparent. Sipping hot tea or coffee, moustaches also often became stained. Finally, Harvey Adams, an innovative Englishman, in 1860 came up with an unusual invention, "the moustache cup". The latter had a ledge, called a moustache guard, across the cup. The ledge had one semicircular opening against the side of the cup. The pampered moustache then rested safe and dry on the guard while sipping a hot beverage through the opening.

(Another source also mentioned that melting moustache wax in the tea was enough to send the women present into a swoon, so evidently, this little feature was much needed!)

For school this year, we have been studying the Victorian era, so this was a timely find! Of course, my students needed to test it out...

Perfect!