Tea Cup Tuesday-August Already!

Hello All!
I am delighted to be here with you all again today for Tea Cup Tuesday! Yay!
(Can you believe it is the middle of August already!)
How fun is this, sharing our beautiful tea cups and sentiments with each other.
Today I am sharing two cups that are very similar in shape, weight and feel.

This first one is what I have been calling my botanical cup, because of the little vignettes of flowers. The flowers are different in each section. I adore the fancy gold trims.

It has a simple loop handle, and as you can see it was well loved and a good amount of the gold has been worn away by loving hands. It is a very fine, and delicate cup.

All the little gold dots were applied by hand, many years ago.

This is a very pretty cup with all the little windows of flowers

A close up of the plates edge.

As you can see, it was created by Limoges. William Guerin began making pottery in Limoges France in 1836. His son joined him much later, around 1903. This mark could have been in use as early as 1891 or as late as 1936.
But as it does not say "made in" I am thinking it would be before 1920.

Here is my second cup to share for today. It is very similar to the first cup, the same cup and plate shape, and the same handle. What is different is the country of origin, and the raised gold design and the hand painted flowers are much simpler in execution than that of the first cup.

It is a very pretty cup, but upon close inspection you can see that the artist did not paint within the lines very well. The entire cup is hand painted.

This cup too, was well loved, as the gold has rubbed off the simple loop handle with repeated use.

But still, it is delicate and very sweet!

The porcelain is very thin and lightweight. So tea tastes quite good in it.

Did you guess? Yes, it is made by Nippon!
Martha, I know you knew that right away!
So, even though the cups were very similar, they were made in two totally different countries.

Here is the other vintage tea cozy I bought in the UK. I love the embroidery!

Such pretty vibrant color. The background is a little grey, so I am thinking of trying some Borax on it to lighten it and banish the dullness. I am just not sure how the colorful threads will do. Anyone know?
Thank you so much for stopping by to visit today! I have loved having you and I enjoy reading your comments. If you would like to play along with Martha and I, just go and create a post with your tea cup in it, tell us about it, show us the backstamp if you can, we love to see that. Last week I saw several cups from companies I had never heard of and that is always a delight!
Once you have your post up, link that specific post to the Linky system below. Then we can come and visit you!

Hugs,
Terri