Limbourg Brothers – Très Riches Heures, May Mug

In May 1411, the courtiers of John, Duke of Berry, ride out in splendour. Clad in robes of spring green — the colour of hope and renewal — they wind through the Bois de Vincennes to the sound of trumpets, their horses garlanded, their laughter carrying across the vellum. Rising behind them in the distance, the towers of the Palais de la Cité — the royal palace on the Île de la Cité in Paris, seat of the French crown — gleam silver-white against a sky of lapis blue.

This is Mois de Mai from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the most celebrated illuminated manuscript of the Middle Ages. Painted around 1412–1416 by the Flemish brothers Pol, Herman, and Johan Limbourg — three prodigies who died young, their masterwork left unfinished — it depicts the twelve months in scenes of breathtaking refinement. No other medieval book matches its colour, its observation of the natural world, or the sheer joy it takes in human festivity.

The May folio is its most exuberant page: a world at its most alive, before plague and war and the long shadow of the fifteenth century closed in. Carried into that world every morning, this mug is a small act of optimism.

The design wraps the cavalcade scene around the mug. The full original folio — with its gilded outer border and the zodiac calendar arch above, showing the sun’s chariot passing through Gemini — is reproduced below for reference.

Folio for May, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Limbourg Brothers, c. 1412–1416. Musée Condé, Chantilly. Public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.

Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.