Set of Three Haviland Limoges Teacups, Green Garland and Gold Handles, c. 1894–1930

The Piece

A set of three Haviland and Company Limoges porcelain teacups from the turn of the last century, decorated with a fine garland of green leaves and small red berries under a thin red rim line, with burnished gold handles. The cups are the plain, low, rounded Haviland tea shape of the period, a flared bowl on a small foot ring with a slightly everted lip, in the thin, glassy, pure white hard-paste porcelain the firm was famous for. The decoration is a transfer garland of trailing green foliage with tiny clusters of red berries, continuous around the outside just below the rim, finished with a hairline of red at the lip inside and out, and the ear-shaped handles are gilt solid in bright coin gold. Each cup carries two marks on the base: the green Haviland France whiteware mark of the Limoges factory and the red Haviland and Co Limoges mark of the decorating studio, which together place the set in the firm's Haviland and Company period.

The three cups are matched in shape, size and pattern. They are in excellent condition for their age: no chips, cracks, crazing or repairs, the glaze bright, the garland and red line crisp and unfaded, and the gold on the handles strong with light rubbing at the top where fingers hold them. Saucers are not present; the cups are offered on their own.

History & Provenance

Haviland and Company was founded by David Haviland, a New York china importer who moved to Limoges in 1842 to make porcelain for the American market and ended by building the largest porcelain works in France. By the 1880s the firm was producing tens of thousands of patterns, most of them the delicate transfer and hand-touched floral borders on plain white blanks that furnished the dining rooms of middle-class America for two generations, sold through jewelers and department stores and chosen for weddings in every state. The two-mark system on this set, a green mark for the whiteware and a red mark for the decoration, was the firm's practice from the 1890s until the Depression, and the small garland and gold handle style belongs to the simpler, more restrained patterns of that period, before the firm's great reorganization in 1931.

The cups are marked and attributed on the marks. The dating rests on the marks and the construction rather than style alone: the green Haviland France whiteware mark was used from 1894 to 1931 and the red Haviland and Co Limoges decorating mark from 1893 to 1930, so the set was made between about 1894 and 1930.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Three cups is the right number for a tea tray, a coffee for two with one for the pot, a row on a kitchen shelf or a trio of small planters for herbs on a windowsill. The green garland and the gold handles sit with the Christmas table as naturally as with a spring one, and the cups pair with any white saucer or with the collected odd saucers of a cottage cupboard. They make a small, easy gift for a Haviland collector filling in a service, or for anyone starting one. For a shop or designer client they are the marked, excellent, authentic Limoges smalls that style a tablescape and sell at the counter.