Utensils 4

The European Chocolate Cup

Mancerina i xícara*

Alcora Manufactory, tin-glazed earthenware, mid-18th century. Reproduces the fashion of the 17th-century Spanish saucer--which held the cup in metal lattice--with beaker reminiscent of a gourd.

Courtesy of the Museu de Ceràmica, Barcelona.

Photographed by Gillem Fernández-Huerta.

{*Mancerina, named for Pedro Álvarez de Toledo y Leiva, the Marqués de Mancera, Viceroy of Peru from 1639–1648, whose rumored palsy may have been the inspiration for this saucer design.

Jícara, cup or bowl made from the gourd of the calabash tree in Mexico and mimicked in the ceramic tumbler.}

Tasse trembleuse**

Saint-Cloud Manufactory, c. 1720s. Saint-Cloud pioneered this French artificial porcelain

beaker in a rimmed saucer in the 1690s as the first chocolate cup made in France.

Courtesy of Les Amis des Musées de Rouen.

{**trembleuse, trembling saucer, Saint-Cloud's minimalist update on the mancerina, offers a recessed center for the tumbler, which sits tight.}

Cup with Etruscan handles and saucer***

Delicate revolution-era trembleuse decorated in the symbols of fraternity embraced by the new French Republic. Hard-paste porcelain. National Manufactory of Sèvres, c. 1793-96.

Courtesy of Dalva Brothers, Inc., New York.

{***Robert Adams pioneered the Etruscan style in the 1760s. Imported into France, the style étrusque was a favorite of Louis XV and went on to survive the Revolution.}