63. Mustache Cup

This porcelain mustache cup and saucer, unmarked but probably American made c.1900, once belonged to Charles Clark Waters (1866-1934) of Neelsville, great-grandfather of the 2010 donor. Photos of Waters show him wearing a mustache and beard in 1890, and a bushy mustache around 1910.

The invention of this form is attributed to English potter Harvey Adams in the 1860s. Victorian mustaches were often waxed and thus more durable if protected from the steam and liquid of a hot cup of tea or coffee. On most such cups, a built-in partial mustache guard was recessed from the rim. The top of this cup, however, is half-covered with a guard that is atop the rim and decorated with a red-lined pink band to match the rims of the cup and saucer. Some mustache cups were decorated with sentiments like “forget-me-not” or “remember me,” suggesting they were gifts from wives or maybe children.

Charles C. Waters was a horseman whose Pleasant Fields Stock Farm was well known in racing circles at the turn of the 20^th century. It was located near the village of Neelsville (Rte. 355 and West Old Baltimore Road) that vanished early in the century. In 1997, a small portion of the farm was preserved as the Waters House Special Park in Germantown, including barns and stables from Charles’s tenure and a three-section house, part of which dates back to the 1790s. Before 1920, Charles and his son William gave up horses to open a Gaithersburg Buick dealership; it failed during the Great Depression, at which time the farm was sold.

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