Our primer continues. Today we talk about themed cups, of which there are countless numbers — though one of them stands apart, quite literally in a house of its own.
A cup by the Royal Grafton manufactory.
That house from Anne of Green Gables decorates a great many cups by different makers. It is where Anne Shirley grew up — the tomboy invented by the writer Lucy Maud Montgomery on Prince Edward Island, the Canadian province of the same name. A fiercely red-haired girl from the Canadian backwoods won admirers all over the world, and her author was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.
The house stands at Cavendish, and today it is a museum complex and a large park. Green Gables Heritage Place is one of my dearly loved spots in Canada, and I have been there more than once.
The entrance to the house, and me in front of it.
An amusing fact: the most ardent and devoted admirers of the book and of its heroine probably live in Japan. You can see them walking about Cavendish in large groups at the height of the tourist season.
The staff of the heritage site have recreated the daily life of the period as far as they could.
Anne's bedroom. On the bedside table at the left is a washing set — a jug and basin. I have had many like it, including eighteenth-century pieces. Not in the photograph is the chamber pot, which was usually made in the same colours and patterns.
And here is the kitchen, one of the places where the women of the time worked by the sweat of their brow.
The Green Gables kitchen. In the cupboard, cups, plates, glasses, trays and dishes.
Netflix made a mini-series based on Montgomery's books not so long ago.
Most of the cups devoted to this house I have sent to buyers in Japan. They do not begrudge the rather expensive shipping.
A cup by the Royal Winton manufactory.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, having received more than a hundred thousand dollars in total for her heroine — a sum that, adjusted for inflation, would be a million and a half today — wrote in her diary that it was a pity happiness could not be bought with it.
Moments of happiness on Prince Edward Island.
There will be several more posts about themed cups, but for now we are all getting ready for the New Year and Christmas.