The reason people often talk about having a favorite or even a “best” mug, but far less often of a favorite bowl (and hardly ever claim to have a favorite plate) is because even in these informal times, most people still buy their dishes in matching sets, whereas they accumulate mugs. Even someone who does not care very much about dinnerware can with relative ease purchase a matching set of four or eight dinner plates, soup bowls, cereal bowls, or bread-and-butter plates at Ikea or Target or Goodwill. But you have to go slightly out of your way to buy a set of matching mugs. I don’t mean to claim that it’s impossible to do so, but most people do not buy their mugs in matching sets; mugs come piecemeal, in a series of often-unpredictable and sometimes-bizarre circumstances.
Most people scrape together a mug collection over a period of, let’s say conservatively, five to seven years, often by accident. They might buy one or two while they’re out buying plates. If they’ve worked a desk job, another might come from there, either as a generic holiday present or unthinkingly brought home from the office kitchen and never bothered to return. If they’ve worked in a restaurant, increase that number to three or four. Some are housewarming presents, or a trinket purchased as an afterthought by an affectionate grandparent on a casual visit. A few might have been left behind by exes who never technically moved in, but whose domestic clutter was nevertheless incorporated into the household, another few impulse purchases at Cracker Barrel-type restaurants during road trips, a few from museum gift shops, et cetera. And of course the more people one adds to one’s household — partners, children, roommates — the more mugs they bring to the collection, and any attempts at arrangement by characteristics like size or function can at best only gesture in the direction of order, without ever producing anything like order itself.
As a direct result of this jumble, everyone privately thinks of at least one mug as being “the best mug,” or their particular mug. It cannot be used every day, unless you keep your preference something of a secret from your fellow-householders and are willing to wash dishes early and often, and it is for this reason that the days when one is able to use “the best mug” are understood as special. (Incidentally, the very best mugs tend to come from the little gift shops attached to museums and botanical gardens. In one sense they are overpriced — why on earth should any cup that is not the Holy Grail cost $30 — but in another sense they are priceless: The walls are thick enough to retain heat on the inside without burning your fingers on the outside, the handles are gracefully contrived, the lips are straightforward and never dribble. I don’t know what special mug technologies are unique to museum gift shops, but in my experience the gift-shop coffee mug has never failed me.) Then there is the rank of next-best mugs, the use of which determines a second-rate sort of day, and so forth on down until we reach the mug, or mugs, which we would not use unless circumstances compel us to do so.
Each “worst mug” is of course relative to its particular collection, and you may dislike yours for wholly unique reasons. But reliable indicators of a bad mug include “whimsical” shapes which are intended to give it a handmade quality but in practice make them impossible to put in a cup holder, walls that are too thick and heavy to lift casually and are liable to crash into your teeth if you don’t carefully calibrate a motion which ought to be second nature, a text or image that starts to flake in the dishwasher, and anything wider than it is tall, which will leach heat as soon as you fill it.
For me, the worst mug is a very tall mug with a deep brown interior and the word OHIO stamped in pink letters on the outside. I find it cumbersome to drink from, awkward to hold, and ugly to look at. Its great height means the last four ounces will always be cold by the time I get to them. The brown interior means I can never see whether my tea has brewed long enough and have to rely on a timer, and the OHIO part baffles me. When was I last in Ohio, and why did I buy this mug there, much less bring it all the way home? I cannot remember. It puts me out of temper to have to drink from it, this mug; it reminds me that life is stern and life is earnest, and for this reason, if no other, I do not get rid of it.
The very existence of the “worst mug in the house” makes all my other mugs more valuable by comparison, and creates relative value in the cabinet economy, which is nothing to sneeze at. The worst mug gives me something to avoid, something to plan against, a reason to strategize; it lends intrigue and suspense to an otherwise-mundane daily ritual, and lends character and animation to my cupboard, which it might otherwise lack. And if I were to get rid of it, I would of course immediately find myself resenting one of the mugs I currently consider “acceptable for regular use,” and soon enough it would chip around the most highly trafficked part of the lip, never becoming so cracked to need to be thrown away, but newly awkward to use, and then it would become the new worst mug. The only way to avoid having a “worst mug” is to have only one mug in the whole house, which is only a viable solution if you are one of the Boxcar Children. The rest of us must learn to be grateful even for the mugs we hate; they make the rest of our mugs so much more beautiful by comparison.
Daniel Lavery is a writer with two favorite mugs. Marcus Eakers’s vibrant works depict exaggerated human experiences that draw influence from surrealism, symbolism, animation, illustration and everything in between.
