Type: Astrological - Symbolic - Seasonal

The Fortune Telling Tea Cup, manufactured in 1899 by the Fortuna Cup Co. of 49 Horatio Street, New York, New York, is the second-oldest fortune telling cup for which a patent was granted in the United States. The pattern of chinaware is typical of late 19th century American white-bodied highly glazed table ware and is marked "Semi Porcelain" in an octagon in iron-rust red on the saucer bottom and "Patented Nov. 8, 1898" on the bottom of the cup in black. The saucer, which is over-large and over-deep by modern standards, hearkens back to the old custom, especially common in Ireland and among Irish-American immigrants, of pouring hot tea from the cup into the saucer to cool it and drinking it lukewarm from the saucer.

Among American families of Irish extraction, it is still popular to tell the tea leaves in the saucer rather than in the cup, and this set is designed for reading that way as well as in the cup. In saucer-reading, one uses the shapes of the leaves as standard symbols and times foretold events according to their position in the saucer, with the leaves nearest the outer rim signifying the present, those in the middle area indiacting the near future, and the center of the saucer representing the distant and/or dangerous future. How far into the future a saucer reading extends is a variable, but is usually said to be no more than a month or a year away, depending on the reader's family beliefs.

According to the 28 page booklet that accompanies it, The Fortune Telling Cup is "Prophetic, Interesting, Amusing, and Instructive." The method of reading described in the booklet is unique to this cup, relying on the tea leaves merely as markers of the seasons, months of the year, signs of the Zodiac and, most importantly, the many interior rectangluar areas, for each of which there is a specific divinatory meaning. The result is a novel system of cup-reading which can only be used with this unusually marked teracup and requires the use of the booklet to decode the otherwise arcane meanings of the rectagular areas.

Although Hanley's Fortune Telling Cup was a novel invention, the author made a point of acknowledging older and more traditional methods of reading tea cups through the shapes that are formed by tea leaves; after giving his own method of cup reading, he concludes with a presentation of one of the earliest printed lists of symbolic tea leaf divination signs, consisting of about 50 "Figures and Signs as Interpreted by Our Gradmothers." Hanley's 1899 use of the word "Grandmothers" casts his understanding of the traditional symbol-system of Celtic and Anglo Saxon tea reading back as far as 1840 - 1850. The meanings he gives in this section of his text are quite similar to modern tea leaf interpretations -- for instance, an old shoe represents "a wedding and a journey," the cat means "secret enemies", and the dog means "faithful friend."

Designer: John William Hanley

On September 28, 1898, John W. Hanley, a New York City designer of games and fortune telling goods, many of them based on astrological symbolism, applied for a Design Patent for this cup and saucer. The government duly granted him a patent for "A Cup or Similar Article" on November 8, 1898 (Design 29,617), with a patent term of seven years. The patent documents appear below.

Hanley was an interesting character. Under the imprint of his Planograph Co., he designed a number of games, many of them built around fortune telling concets and astrological symbolism. Zodiacal images appear in several of his patents.

In 1912 he patented a unique board design intended for use with ordinary playing cards as an aid to fortune telling. This "Game" (Patent 1,016,142, January 39, 1912) allowed 36 cards to be laid out on a series of rectangles grouped in rows of three, each group bearing images of stars and Zodiac animals with keywords indicating outcomes such as "Hope Triplicity -- To your Wish / Hope Assistance Jupiter / Hope Realization Aries / Hope Non-Assistance Saturn." The playing card poracl board came complete with a booklet of interpretations, the fore-runner of contemporary "little white booklets" that accompany modern tarot cards and cartomancy cards.

Among other games, Hanley patented an unusual form of Tiddlywinks that used a spider web design as a target board, and featured life-like drawings of house flies versus "Cave Spiders" and "Rock Spiders." ("Game Apparatus," Patent Number 1,114,608, October 20, 1914). This game had as its object "to teach the ultimate victory of good over evil or the optimistic domination of right conduct over evil conduct or influences" as well as "to teach the natural characteristics of certain insects such as flies and spiders" and "to provide amusement and develop the skill of the eyes as well as the fingers." The game board contains "secret parlors" in which are printed "the names of the various species of spiders which are presumed to be invited to a great feast by the wicked spy spider 13 who holds the center of the large web or parlor." In the end, the winner is "a fly able to destroy the spider's web."

A quarter-century after this beautiful and rare fortune telling cup and saucer set was made, John W. Hanley was still patenting games with astrological and fortune-telling aspects, as witness his Design Patent 63,366 for a "Game Board" (November 27, 1923) which was ornamented with the signs of the Zodiac.

Maker: Willets Manufacturing Company [?]

The only mention of such a mark i can find appears in "Marks of American Potters," by Edwin Atlee Barber, A.M., Ph.D., curator and Secretary of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (Patterson and White Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1904). Writing just a few years after the Hanley cup was manufactured, Barber said:

"In 1879 the Willets Mfg. Co. came into possession of the works formerly operated by Wm. Young & Sons, and still retain them. The plant has since been extended from time to time, until it is now one of the largest in this country. The marks used by the Willets Mfg. Co. are as follows: [...] On their semi-porcelain they have used an octagonal mark."

This is very little evidence to go on, but in lieu of further data or photographs of a verified Willets "octagonal mark," i am assigning Hanley's cup to the Willets Manufacturing Company.

(My profuse thanks to the Trenton Historical Society at http://trentonhistory.org/Made/Marks.html for placing Barber's monograph online.)

THE MYSTIC TEA ROOM is written by catherine yonwode,
and provides free-to-read but copyright-protected information
about tea leaf reading in folk magic.
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