Zwiebelmuster Teacup & Saucer

The blue-and-white on this German teacup and saucer is the onion pattern, a design so old and so loved it never really left the European table. Meissen first drew it in 1739, and the German potteries copied it so lovingly that it became the blue and white a whole continent grew up setting the table with. This set came to us by way of Belgium, German-made and marked underneath "Original Zwiebelmuster," the German name for the onion pattern, beneath a little crown, the cup scalloped at the rim and painted all over with cobalt flowers and curling stems. Sylvie keeps it out for a slow afternoon coffee and a couple of biscuits, the kind of cup that makes you sit down for the whole of it.