Ardalt-Lenwile Zodiac
From Mystic Tea Room
This black and white cup with thick gilding on the black areas is not back-stamped "Japan" or "Made in Japan" but it came with a red and silver foil sticker reading "Hand Painted / Lenwile China / Ardalt / Japan." It is also backstamped in iron-red with the numerical code 6388, which is likely a catalogue number, not a dating code.
Most Ardalt-Lenwile Zodiac cups and saucers are missing the metallic foil paper stickers they were issued with, but all of them have the same iron-red numerical code backstamp, 6388.
Side note: If 6388 were a dating code, one might reasonably hypothesize that it referred to August 8, 1963. However, without having in hand a survey of the form taken by the entire series of all Ardalt-Lenwile numerical back-stamps for all of their porcelain giftwares, this is little more than a random guess. I mention it only because a creatively imaginative online antiques dealer, in the absence of the metallic foil sticker, listed this cup as a "1963 Fortune Telling Cup and Saucer," with no supporting evidence.
Ardalt-Lenwile imported many other examples of gilded black-ware from Japan, but this self reading astrological cup and saucer with a simple golden star in the interior is the only known tasseomancy piece attributable to the company.
DIV-TLR-ALZO
catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room
