JOY ALONG THE WAY: MORNING COFFEE NICER USING CUP WITH FLOWER INSIDE

My morning coffee is sipped (it's hot) from a blue and white cup that must be over 50 years old. The outside bottom of the cup says that it is ironstone, detergent proof, oven proof, that the name of the blue design on white background is Ming Tree. The words, Ming Tree, are inside a rectangular shaped box and underneath it is the word, Japan. I don't know if that means the cup was made in Japan or only that the words, Ming Tree, are of Japanese origin. The latter is probably true. The fake or stolen origin of many designs is rampant in the "dishes" world. Other cups that I have that say Japan or Nippon are thin china while my Ming Tree cup, being ironstone, is twice as thick.

Also on the bottom of this morning coffee cup is the imprimatur of the double phoenix bird which probably is meant to indicate that the cup has been put through two firings since, according to historians Pliny and Tacitus, plus many other legends, the phoenix bird lived for 500 years then burned itself and from the ashes arose another phoenix bird.

I remember well where I purchased the set of this Ming Tree ironstone and the lady who handled the sale. It was at Woolworth's when the store was at the corner of Main and Independence. I told the saleslady I was tired of cups that broke so easily. Every set of kitchen dishes I'd had, the cups were the first to go, all of them. She replied, "I think you'll find these cups won't break so easily. She was right; I'm just now down to the last cup. It's showing the signs of age. A hairline crack runs down one side of it. When it gets very brown I give it a Clorox bath. There is a chip along the brim too. But it is across from where I sip. It freshens up also in the Clorox bath.

Why do I put up with the cup? I have lots of other cups. But none of them have a flower on the inside wall. My Ming Tree cup has a pretty blue flower inside. I observe it every morning when the coffee is reduced to a certain level. I think of the saleslady. I see her every once in a while on the streets. Sometimes I want to stop and chat with her, recall the sale. But she would have no reason to remember. One in 5,000 customers maybe. I doubt she even remembers the blue and white cups.

In addition to the saleslady I think of a poetic fragment from "Kubla Khan," Coleridge's poem from a Mongol who "in Xanadu raised a stately pleasure dome." This was during the Ming dynasty in China. Therefore I can somewhat account for the word Ming in the imprimatur. As for the tree, I study the blue design and conclude that the "tree" and "flowers" that bloom along its trailing vine are not like any tree or flowers I have ever seen. Probably no one else has seen this supposed tree, except Coleridge, while under the influence of laudanum which he confesses, may have seen, in his mind, this exotic imagery.

Probably, most of all, I think of a friend who, when we were discussing the dishes we were allowed to have in our playhouses, said, "We mostly had broken cups and to have a piece with a flower inside was like having Spode or Haviland.

Such cups seem to reinforce the old axiom, "It's what's on the inside that counts."

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.