Random Objects | Lithophane tea cups
I had coffee with my friend Linda yesterday and she commented on the photographs of the hand painted signs that I posted here on Monday. She too has stopped many times in Greenwood on her way to Vancouver and admired the old store signage. She told me a story about a small treasure she had found in Greenwood a few years ago. There are a couple of junk stores in Greenwood and like any good junk collector she can't drive past without stopping for a quick visit. This one time she purchased a sweet little Japanese tea cup, got back in her car and headed off to the coast. It wasn't until she had got home and unwrapped her tea cup that she realized that she had found something special - a lithophane!
See the beautiful image of the woman in the bottom of the cup? It's only visible when you hold the cup up to the light!
Linda did some research and found that these cups are quite rare but you can find them now and then on Ebay. The image on the base of the cups is made by embedding a 3 dimensional porcelain carving into the smooth, fine finished porcelain cup. You can't tell the image is there at all until you hold the cup to the light. Though you might like to see this today - I had never even heard of a Lithophane until now - had you? Now I am going to hold every tea cup up to the light to see if there's something hiding in there.