Every Mug Has a Provenance

Every motif is a documented work: the artist, the year, the holding institution and the rights status are named in each listing. Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs.

The Collections

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Gift Ideas

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An Art Historian's Eye, Not an Algorithm

Dr. Walther Fuchs holds a doctorate from the University of Zurich and has spent three decades researching art, history, and culture. Every mug in this collection passes five exacting tests before it earns a place on your table.

Meet the Collector

New arrivals

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Stories

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  • Tacuinum sanitatis, Nix et glacies, folio 96 verso: a young man and a young woman throwing snowballs on the ice before snow-covered mountains. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, NAL 1673.

    Nix et Glacies: The Oldest Snowball Fight in Eu...

    Around 1390 a Lombard workshop was illustrating a Latin health handbook. When it reached the entry for snow and ice, the painter did not draw a doctrine. He painted two...

    Nix et Glacies: The Oldest Snowball Fight in Eu...

    Around 1390 a Lombard workshop was illustrating a Latin health handbook. When it reached the entry for snow and ice, the painter did not draw a doctrine. He painted two...

  • The plate as printed: Georgia O'Keeffe's White Flower in the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 1930, captioned Lent by Alfred Steiglitz; below, the copyright notice of the same issue, reading only Copyrighted, 1930.

    The Notice That Was Missing a Name

    In June 1930 the Cleveland Museum of Art printed Georgia O'Keeffe's White Flower under a copyright notice of three words and no name. What is missing from that line decides...

    The Notice That Was Missing a Name

    In June 1930 the Cleveland Museum of Art printed Georgia O'Keeffe's White Flower under a copyright notice of three words and no name. What is missing from that line decides...

  • How Henri Matisse Learned to Draw With Scissors

    How Henri Matisse Learned to Draw With Scissors

    In 1941, a near-fatal surgery left Henri Matisse too weak to stand at an easel. What followed - a decade of cutting directly into painted paper - became the most...

    How Henri Matisse Learned to Draw With Scissors

    In 1941, a near-fatal surgery left Henri Matisse too weak to stand at an easel. What followed - a decade of cutting directly into painted paper - became the most...

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