Titanic Egg Cup

Two and a half miles under the Atlantic, there is a large concentration of kitchenware, dishes, silver, and crockery that spilled en mass the night Titanic sank. Explorers have dubbed this stretch of Titanic’s wreck site “Hell’s Kitchen,” as the scene so vividly captures the humanity of the disaster.
 

This egg cup, recovered from the wreck site in 2000, is made of ceramic and stands slightly less than three inches high.  Most likely, this particular version belonged to a passenger on board the Ship.  It is decorated with a mother hen and three chicks, and does not match any of Titanic’s other dish patterns.

 An egg cup, sometimes called egg server, is a container used for serving boiled eggs within their shells.  The upwardly concave portion holds the egg, and often egg cups include a base (informally known as a "footie”) to raise the egg-retaining portion and give stability. Although egg cups were in vogue at the turn of the century, egg cup collecting remains a popular hobby.

The White Star Line provided egg cups in their china service for Titanic passengers. The cups were delicate and small.

 

 

This ceramic egg cup is based on an egg cup recovered from the RMS Titanic. The pattern, nicknamed “Wisteria,” was replicated from an original Titanic design.

The act of collecting egg cups is referred to as “pocillovy;” it comes from the Latin “pocillum” for small cup and “ovi” for eggs.

Read more about Titanic on our Stories From The Titanic blog...