Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Cold and sunny today, with a gradual warmup starting tomorrow. I’m hearing some bird song in the morning, which is a good sign. On Monday we had high winds and lots of rain but it was warmer in the evening than it has been and the peepers reappeared. “Peepers! One night only!”

More egg cups:

A very tall egg cup on the left, handmade from a Holland Mold. It was a gift from a reader. I love that face. (Too tall for the cubbies, so it sits on a different shelf.)

Another bunny with an orange cup on his back.

One of the first egg cups in my collection. This is a rooster egg cup by Holt Howard. It was in perfect condition until it fell one day. I had to glue it back together.

One of my favorites on the left, another egg cup made for Fanny Farmer. It’s very heavy and I’ve read that it was made by McCoy – whether that’s actually true or not, I don’t know. The paint is in perfect condtion, which is very rare. And the words Fanny Farmer are inscribed on the bottom edge of the cup.

Two dogs holding up an egg cup. This one is so whimsical and the design at the top of the cup is charming.

Momma duck and babies – this one is beautifully designed and painted. The cup has a lustreware finish.

A Walking Ware clone egg cup. I have two of these, one is an actual Walking Ware cup from Carleton in England. This one isn’t, but I love it anyway.

Have to get the car inspected today. Fingers crossed! Don is leaving in just a few minutes.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

First off, I cannot recommend the movie adaptation of Hamnet  enough. If you remember, I wrote a love letter about the book. It is one of my favorite novels ever. Don also read it (he’s normally a nonfiction guy) and loved it. And you know I usually avoid film adaptations of my favorite novels because I want to protect the characters my imagination created while reading the book and because I’m invariably disappointed in the casting. I read enough raves about this movie adaptation that we decided to go for it. We watched it Saturday night. It is stunning, in every way. Maggie O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay and it shows. It is simply beautiful. We felt as if we held our breath through the entire movie, it was that gorgeous and powerful. A wonderful cast, but Jessie Buckley, Jessie Buckley, Jessie Buckley! – on my god – she deeply inhabits the role of Agnes (Shakespeare’s wife). I don’t when I’ve seen anything as powerful and rich as her work in this film. Needless to say, we were thrilled when she won the Oscar. She absolutely deserved it.

Rain today, and a line of severe thunderstorms this afternoon. Maybe even a bit of snow. I’m not looking forward to it.

More cuties.

On the left is the egg cup that started my collection. It was a gift from my godparents when I was a child. Made for Fannie Farmer, it features two chicks. Somehow, I held onto it for decades and it followed me from apartment to apartment. When I saw it in an article on collecting egg cups in Martha Stewart Living, I realized that there was a whole world of charming figural egg cups out there. And once a collector, always a collector.

A bunny egg cup that I’ve always believed to be the bunny version of Scout – same mischievous look in the eyes, same pink ears.

A bunny standing outside a house. There are many egg cups with this window motif, all of them different from each other.

A pig holding up an egg cup.

A duck carrying an egg cup with an orange rim on her back. Lustreware finish.

A pig preparing to dine on an egg. It’s Staffordshire pottery made for Tiffany. I love this one.

A little girl in a bunny costume holding a polka dot egg cup. She has the sweetest face!

There will be more.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

It’s sunny today but very cold. A cursory glance at the forecast shows nighttime temps at below freezing for at least the next ten days.

I’m reading There are Rivers in the Sky  by Elif Shafak. I’m about 150 pages in and it’s extraordinary. In the meantime, I’m headed for trouble as all four books that I had on hold at the library have arrived at my local branch. Two of them are new, which means a limited checkout time, and the book I’m currently reading is over 400 pages long. I will most definitely be reading a lot in the coming week. Isn’t it funny when every book, even books that appeared to have lots of people waiting in the queue, appear within a couple of days of each other?

Obviously, I will be stopping by the library today.

The tour continues:

A sweet little Scottie dog holding up an egg cup. It’s another cup that I found in the first few years of collecting. He’s in perfect condition. I love the blue collar. Marked Japan.

A wooden egg cup which comes from Italy and a company called Sevi. These egg cups are adorable and I want more of them. It’s rare when you find both the egg cup and  the knit cap that came with it. I have a reader of the blog to thank for that as it was a gift from her. The knit cap functions as a cozy.

My wooden sailor egg cup. Don found this one in an antique shop and Scout decided to give it to me for my birthday. I researched this one. He was part of a series of egg cups that were sold by Woolworth’s in the 40s. Like the Sevi egg cup, he came with a white sailor cap. Alas, I don’t have it, but I’d sure love to find one.

I found this egg cup during one of my middle of the night bidding wars on eBay. We lived in our first rental cottage then and I had just discovered the world of figural egg cups and – you won’t be surprised by this – I was obsessed. A chicken and a duck and/or chick are on either side of an egg cup. The chicken is eating and the chick seems to be playing. Marked Japan.

The center cup is one of my favorites and I rarely, if ever, see it these days. An artistic rabbit is painting an egg. He’s even holding a palette. Marked Japan.

On the right is an egg cup given to me by Linda, a longtime reader of the blog. It’s absolutely adorable. What you can’t see is the tail, which is removable. It functions as a salter and has holes for salting and a cork to keep the salt in.

You know this little tour is good for me, too. It reminds me of what I have and how much I treasure these little beauties. It’s all too easy to walk by the cabinet and take no notice of what’s inside.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.