Kitchen & the humble Mugs.
- Iliana Lanuza
- 29 ene 2021
- 4 Min. de lectura
Actualizado: 3 feb 2021
Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world daily. Over 90 percent of coffee production takes place in developing countries—mainly South America—while consumption happens primarily in industrialized economies.
Hello,
Welcome to my personal blog "Kitchen and letters"
Morning, day or night, mugs will hold you tight. They hold you up, the keep your secrets, and join you anything more. Mugs are there not matter what, for tea, coffee, hot chocolate. Mugs will be there when you are happy or sad. Is the first thing that you hold in the morning.
The photo I shows my "small" mug collection. I started to collect mugs as an accident. It all began when I was about 18 when a friend that was visiting NYC brought me as a souvenir a mug from the art museum. I dragged that mug everywhere until one day my best friend Miriam dropped it by accident the first day of University as I was moving to the dorms. Now that I think of it, it was the end of the beginning of something.
After that day she felt so guilty that started to find the perfect mug, years later I gave up and started collecting. I started with Starbucks mugs, then H&M, and now, when ever I look at one I simply get it. For me collecting mugs is like changing your T-shirt everyday, why drink in the same mug everyday when your mood changes? I have mugs that remind me of places where I have been, where I will like to go, the mood that I'm, the places that I love, and some of them, I got them because I love them. Most of them have been presents. Some of the pieces my mom gave them to me, and there is one piece that has a lot of story. I will write that story in another blog entry.
Bob Thomson, who began collecting mugs in 1995, is the current record holder, with a grand total of 6,352 as of 2006!
As I was getting ready to write this entry I started to do some research, just for the fun of it ( I'm a research nerd), and to give you some fun details of it. The more I think of it, the more I realize how much mugs are a big part of our lives. Everyday whether we drink coffee or tea, alone or share it with someone, mugs are there with and for us. I did not realize but mugs are the most collectable item in the world! Just think of how many coffee shops are out there, every day new coffee shops open(and pretty sure many close too) and how many mugs are those?
The need for mugs was discovered as far back as the Stone Age, when the very first mugs were fashioned from wood and bone. Mugs carved from bone have been found in China and Japan, dating back to approximately 10,000 B.C. These are rather unsophisticated affairs with no handles, but their purpose is clear.
Have you ever thought how many stories start with "A MUG"?When we start to get to know someone we invite them for a cup of coffee or tea. Its a social thing, is casual, it's simple. As we enter to adulthood, most of us drink coffee to start the day. When we want to catch up for someone after a long time, we start with a coffee. When que drive long hrs and need a break what better way to reset than... you guess it, with a cup of coffee.
Some of us are particularly picky in which mug we drink our hot drink. We care what they are made off, if they are local, crafted or industrialized, if they represent something or are just a simple mug. I remember that my mother likes small mugs, because she drinks her coffee slower that if its big it gets cold too soon, for me they are too small, I prefer them big, I like to hold them with my two hands, specially in cold days.
The mug waned in popularity over the years, particularly with the affected sensibilities of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. No polite host or hostess would have dreamed of serving their guests tea in mugs; only fine china cups and saucers, and all the rituals that went along with them, would do. However, while this may still be the case amongst the increasingly obsolete upper classes, us humble folk have reclaimed the mug, once more giving it pride of place in our kitchens.
Let's briefly talk about coffee shop, In the first coffee shop, Kiva Han, which opened in Constantinople in 1475, wooden mugs were used. Eventually porcelain, invented in China around 600 A.D. (hence porcelain alternate moniker, “china” or “fine china”), and other ceramics became one of the preferred materials for mugs.
What today’s coffee drinkers think of as the “classic” or “traditional” coffee mug came on the scene in 1945. It was a product of the Victor Insulator Company, the oldest insulator business in North America. The war overseas had a crucial effect on the design and eventual popularity of the mug—built to military specifications—its thick walls added to its insulating properties, and its extra weight helped it survive falls and avoid tipping while aboard ship.
The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking as the modern beverage appears in modern-day Yemen in southern Arabia in the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a manner similar to how it is now prepared for drinking.
I wanted to end this blog entry talking about coffee shops| houses. I will explore this more in dept and I will write about it soon. I was getting too much in to the subject that I was moving away from the mugs. Maybe also I will do more research about the humble mug.
This blog entry will be officially the lounge of this personal blog. I has delaying it for too long. but here it is!
Thank you for reading me.
In good food,
Iliana Lanuza
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