The moustache cup (or mustache cup) is a drinking cup with a Semicircle ledge inside. The ledge, called a moustache guard, has a half moon-shaped opening to allow the passage of liquids and serves as a guard to keep dry. It is generally acknowledged to have been invented in the 1870s by British Pottery Harvey Adams (1835–?).
Although many moustache cups were made in America, the earliest were marked with names which led buyers to believe they were actually manufactured in England. This was due to the popularity of English-made ceramics. Therefore, with the exception of the quadruple Plating moustache cups made in the U.S., it is nowadays extremely difficult to find an authentic Victorian moustache cup bearing an American pottery mark.
Moustache cups are becoming highly collectible as their popularity has increased in recent years due to a resurgence of men's facial hair styles, particularly ones calling for moustache wax.[2] My Moustache Cup - History
In the opening scene of the 1931 short comedy film Be Big!, Oliver Hardy, while packing for a trip to Atlantic City, coyly asks his wife if she packed his moustache cup.
In Episode 15 of Season 4 of the television series The Andy Griffith Show, Aunt Bee receives one as a gift from a local farmer, Mr. Frisby.
In Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara thinks of the painted China moustache cups she made for the bazaar.
In Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel Inherent Vice, protagonist Doc Sportello buys Wyatt Earp's personal mustache cup, which he suspects is a fake but later proves to be authentic.
In the Martin Beck novel, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, a minor character sporting a full beard and moustasche ruefully comments, "They ought to serve beer in mustache cups."
In the Japanese manga "Cat and Gentleman's Tearoom," the mustachioed protagonist, Sizuka Taki, favors a Moustache cup.
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