Avon Honor Society Award Cup and Saucer, Octagonal Porcelain with Peach Rose Garlands and Acid-Etched Gold, Dated 1994

The Piece

A footed cup and saucer in white porcelain, both cut to an eight-sided form — the cup a faceted bell on a stepped octagonal foot, the saucer a matching octagon.

The decoration is peach roses: full open blooms and small sprigs, hung in swags and garlands that loop around the cup and ring the saucer, tied with coral ribbon and set among fresh green foliage.

Both pieces carry a broad acid-etched gold band of dense scrollwork — at the cup's rim and around the saucer's edge — with fine gold lines at every rim, on the foot and along the scrolled handle.

The detail that makes it is inside. Set into the well of the cup, and again on the saucer, is an oval gilt cartouche framing a portrait of a young Victorian woman, dark-haired, in lace, wreathed in the same peach roses. You find it when you finish your tea.

Both pieces are marked in gold on the underside: CREATED EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE AVON HONOR SOCIETY — © AVON 1994 — ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, the cup also carrying a script H monogram.

History & Provenance

This was not sold. It was earned. Honor Society is a sales achievement level in Avon's recognition programme, and the mark says so precisely — created exclusively for. A Representative hit a number over a full year and this arrived. Every one of these in existence passed through the hands of a woman who sold enough to be given it, which is a different kind of provenance from anything bought in a shop.

The company was built by exactly that arrangement, and by one woman in particular. Persis Foster Eames Albee (1836–1914) was fifty years old when she went to work for David McConnell selling books, and she became the first employee of the California Perfume Company — the firm that would become Avon.

What she actually invented was the method. Albee recruited women as Depot Agents to sell within their own towns and their own circles, with the best of them promoted to General Agents who recruited in turn. It worked at a scale nobody expected: by 1903 the network was over ten thousand agents. She is remembered as the Mother of the California Perfume Company and the first Avon Lady — a title the company could not have given her while she lived, since Avon did not take that name until 1939, twenty-five years after her death.

The Victorian portrait on recognition porcelain of this kind is the company's long-running tribute to Albee, and the piece belongs to an annual series awarded through the 1990s. The portrait itself is not captioned on the cup, and the identification rests on the series rather than on a name printed on the porcelain.

Dating needs no argument here. It is dated on the piece: 1994.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A single cup and saucer is a more useful thing to own than a service, because it never has to match anything.

Use it. It is a proper cup with a proper handle, and peach, gold, green and white will sit on any table alongside any other china. One good cup for the morning, kept apart from the everyday mugs, is a small daily pleasure that costs nothing to maintain.

It also displays beautifully. The octagonal saucer stands well in a plate stand or on a rail, the cup sits happily on a shelf or in a cabinet, and the two together fill an awkward small space — a windowsill, a bathroom shelf, the top of a bookcase. Turn the cup and it doubles as a holder for rings, earrings, paperclips or a single small candle.

The portrait is the part people find on their own. It is set where you only see it once the cup is empty, which is a piece of design somebody thought about.

And there is the reason to prefer it over prettier china that cost more: somebody was given this for work she did. It is a trophy the size of a teacup.

A note on care, and with gilded porcelain there are two hard rules. Never put it in a dishwasher and never put it in a microwave. Dishwasher detergent strips gold within a few cycles and it does not come back; gold in a microwave arcs and can damage the piece and the oven both.

Wash it by hand in warm — not hot — water with a little mild soap, and dry it with a soft cloth. Use no abrasive pad, no scouring cream, no bleach and no citrus or descaling cleaner, all of which dull acid-etched gold.

Do not pour boiling water straight into a cold cup; let the water go off the boil, or warm the cup first. Store the cup upright rather than stacked or hung by its handle, and put a paper or felt round between the saucer and anything stacked on it.