Random Saturday - Mugs

Mugs - we probably all have them and we also probably have a favorite mug.
This is not the first time I'm talking about mugs.
There was of course another random Saturday when I showed you my yellow custom made mugs which I still love as much as on the first day and which are my personal favorites.
Also a few days ago, a friend of mine showed a picture of a cupboard full of mugs using the hashtag #alletassenimschrank (for your information, not to have "alle Tassen im Schrank" = "all cups in your cupboard" is a German idiom meaning something like "having a screw loose").
That picture reminded me of the time I shared a picture of my own cupboard full of cat mugs and told the story of my Miss Piggy mug - 15 years ago! - inspired by another blogger asking people for their cups and mugs stories.
Wow, I said mugs a lot in this introduction, didn't I?

Since then my collection hasn't become smaller, in fact I have so many mugs that it's downright ridiculous for a single person who usually never has more than two other people over.

What's the history of mugs? And what's the difference between a mug and a cup? Why is it so hard to get rid of mugs even if you only use the same ones over and over? Why are mugs such a popular gift (yes, the majority of mine were gifts which is part of the answer to the question before)?

Let's start with the history.
Mugs have been around forever, well, not forever, but for a very long time. They were probably a popular gift even back then. I have found different information from 12,000 to 10,000 BC to over 8,000 years old to 3,900 BC, and I could have kept going. To be on the safe side, I'm just going to say they have been around for thousands of years.
Ancient mugs were made from wood or bone, then clay shaped by hand, leather, different metals until the invention of the pottery wheel and finally of porcelain which allowed to make the walls of mugs thinner.

I still grew up using cups myself and somehow it feels as if Miss Piggy was actually my first real mug. Maybe it was my first own one and therefore stands out. I still have a bunch of both tea and coffee cups in my coffee set, too.
What is the difference between a cup and a mug, anyway?

All mugs are cups, but not all cups are mugs.
A cup is an open-top drinking vessel. It can be made from all kinds of materials and it has no pouring lip (because then it would be a jug, but I have to admit that I usually use my milk jug for drinking, anyway, because I never intended it for pouring milk), also it typically has a handle, but sometimes it doesn't although it really should be called a beaker if it doesn't, but there are beakers to drink from without a pouring lip and beakers in laboratory use with a pouring lip, also older people like me expect a saucer with a cup while younger people don't anymore because a cup can even be from paper and who would expect a saucer with that, oh, and of course it can also be a kind of trophy, it can have a stem or not, and by the way, in Asia cups often have a bowl shape and no handle at all and .... yeah, I think you get the idea.
A cup can be pretty much anything.
I'm sure you have your own personal idea of what a cup is.

My favorite childhood set "Arabella / Boston"
by Royal Sphinx Maastricht

So what is a mug?
Mugs are usually intended for hot beverages (mine usually aren't), they have handles and are larger than "ordinary" tea or coffee cups. They typically have a straight-line profile, often cylindrical, but there are flaring mugs, too.
They don't have saucers and they are usually considered to more informal. You remember I mentioned the old-fashioned "Kaffeekränzchen" some time ago? The idea of using mugs for it and not a perfectly matching coffee set is ... I can't even find a word for it.
In German we use both words for a mug, the one for cup = Tasse and mug = Becher which can also be a bit confusing because a "Becher" is really a beaker.
I suggest you call them all "open-top drinking vessel" from now on to avoid any confusion 😂

Why is it so hard to get rid of mugs even if you don't use them?
Maybe I'm the only one who has that problem and maybe it doesn't help that I have used up my space more or less, but haven't really run out yet.
Practically all of my mugs have a story, about why I got them - mostly as gifts as already mentioned - where or when I got them. Most of them have cats on them - for some reason people seem to think I like cats - but there are a few others, too. I can't throw out cat mugs, Bast would strike me down, no doubt.
There have been mugs I threw out, though, promotional ones, for example, that made their way here through the ex, from companies or conferences. Because that's the fun thing about mugs, isn't it? They can be plain, they can be colorful, they can have pictures, quotes, names, they can be souvenirs reminding you of a trip or an event, they can be "magic" and change from black to white with a picture if you pour something hot in, they can be fun, they can be commercially made or elaborately made by hand, there is simply one for every occasion and if there isn't, you can have one made.
No wonder they are such popular gifts.

Let me show you a few of mine.
So - DO you have a favorite mug?

One of the few mugs I actually bought
myself. This one was on sale because
the strainer was missing.

Not just the answer of my cats when I ask them to
clean their litter box, but also my own mood a lot
these days - especially after watching or
reading news. I got two from a very good friend,
one for home and one for work, but then came the
pandemic, so both of them stayed here.

A gift by a co-worker many years ago.
Great size for a mug and I love the handle!

You know my love for little panthers ❣
I think it's funny that the cat on the mug is
sitting in a cup. I'm easily amused sometimes.

This was a gift from another co-worker.

The token non-cat mug, gift from a friend 😉

"To Nanny Ogg he was merely a larger
version of the little fluffy kitten he had
once been. To everyone else he was a
scarred ball of inventive malignancy."
(Terry Pratchett: Maskerade)