Friendship Cups

My husband’s Great Grandmother collected tea cups which she called “Friendship Cups”. Each cup was given to her by friends and family throughout her life and each cup was unique and individual. I worked to capture the individuality of each tea cup while still maintaining the small similarities that brought them together into their own misfit tea set. My husband’s Great Grandmother has passed on but her little collections and knick knacks remain. Through this project I have found a way to keep her alive and share a part of who she was with the world.

I wanted the icons to be very similar to the cups I inherited. I surrounded myself with every cup to better understand why these individualistic cups fit together. I attempted to sketch each cup in a way that still made them look like the original cups but also allowed me to put my own spin on it. Some icons look almost exactly like their cup while others have some different variations in design.

From left to right, this was roughly how I got my twelve tea cups. I was told my black tea cup at first was too contrasting with the other tea cups so I took away some of the black and added roses. In the end, a lot of my time was spent playing with shadows and porcelain shine. In the end I received some critique to remove the shadow all together and only add shine on the gold parts of the cup.

While not every tea cup is an exact replica of the collection my husband’s Great Grandmother owned, I feel the uniqueness and individual design of every cup encompasses my goal to bring a piece of who she was into a digital art form. I managed to keep all the similarities between these cups such as the gold trimmings each of her cups had, but still gave each cup their own personality. Despite their different appearances, they almost feel like they belong to each other and that was exactly my goal.