Moustachioed Crockery
Protecting Stiff Upper Lips Since the 1860s
Pencil, walrus, toothbrush or handlebar? This cup protects them all.
The porcelain ledge across its rim kept the moustaches of Victorian gentleman from getting wet or stained as they sipped their hot beverages. This highly specialised kind of crockery is said to have been invented in the mid-1860s by the potter Harvey Adams, who clearly saw a lucrative business opportunity in the growing craze for facial hair.
When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 she greatly admired his ‘delicate moustachios,’ but the fashion did not take off until the 1860s, when the ‘military moustache’ was inaugurated by the tough conditions in the Crimean War. Soldiers fighting in the Crimea in 1854 had barely enough fuel to boil water for food, let alone for shaving, and a beard was a protection against the freezing conditions, so the British Army reversed a former regulation and permitted soldiers to grow facial hair. Images of the hirsute heroes of the Crimea inspired a rage for moustaches, side burns and beards which sustained an industry of moustache cups, waxes, dyes and grooming kits until the turn of the century.
This cup and saucer was used by Charles James Beavis (1852-1932), a successful Bathurst businessman and Trustee of the Bathurst Branch of the Savings Bank of NSW. It was protecting his moustache around 1895, and may have been used until he died in 1932. By then, moustaches were no longer standard military issue, as facial hair posed serious problems in securing an airtight seal in a gas mask during WWI. Moustaches have gone in and out of fashion since then, but the moustache cup has failed to gain traction with the hipsters of the new millennium.
