Cabinet cup

[2] The decoration generally included overglaze enamel painting of a very high standard, tending to focus on a single main subject or scene, rather than spreading equally around the cup in a pattern.

Caudle cups were given as presents to a mother lying-in after childbirth by female friends who gathered to celebrate by consuming this alcoholic porridge-like dish.

Derby developed in the 1780s a particular saucerless type of "small straight-sided mugs generally termed 'coffee cans'", which "seem most likely have been conceived as cabinet pieces", and have some of the factory's finest painting.

In 1771 "Two curious antique beakers of the fine mazarin blue ground, elegantly painted, the triumph of Bacchus, highly finish'd with burnished and chased gold" were auctioned for £21, while a 49 piece tea and coffee service fetched £7.

7s..[11] Dr. Johnson, who his biographer James Boswell said complained that porcelain was as expensive as silver, seems to have got something of a bargain in the early 1780s when he bought what the auction catalogue described as "A superb and elegant cabinet cup and saucer enamell'd in compartments with landscapes, fine ultramarine blue ground finished with chased and burnished gold" for £1.