Tea Cup Thursday!

I am participating in Miss Spenser's Tea Cup Thursday!

I am still looking for the history of the three legged tea cup. This is my only tea cup with three legs.

When I got it, I used it for jewelry on my dresser. I had never seen one use at a tea party, so I thought of it as only decoration.

Now I see it in a diffent light. I took it out fo the bedroom and into the dinner room

 

It was made by the Lefton Company. That is what it  says on the bottom of the cup.

The Lefton mark can be found on a wide array of pottery, porcelain, and glass imported into the United States by the George Zoltan Lefton Company. The company was founded by this new immigrant from Hungary after he arrived in Chicago, Illinois in 1939 and established the company in 1940. George Lefton had previously worked in the clothing and sportswear industry, but he was a collector of fine porcelain and dreamed of entering that business. America offered the backdrop for even a new immigrant into the country to have a chance at commercal success. George Zoltan Lefton had always admired the quality and workmanship in finer Japanese and oriental porcelain, and after the end of World War II he pursued business relationships in post-war Occupied Japan to export Japanese porcelain to America through his company. George was one of the first American businessmen to enter post-war Japan, and he worked with a Japanese-American named Nunome who helps him to arrange the commercial contracts and becomes his business agent in Japan. Early Lefton china was imported into the U.S. with a "Made in Occupied Japan" mark, used in the years immediately following World War II commencing in about 1946. While not comparable to the best wares of European or Chinese porcelain manufacturers, Japanese porcelain was still of good quality and was produced at a cost that made it affordable for the average American family in the post-war years. The export of china and ceramics was a key contributor to the emergence of Japan from the destitution of the war years and the re-invigoration of their economy. Lefton made a wide variety of pieces, from kitchenware and utilitarian pieces to purely decorative pieces to be displayed on the living room shelf. The company is still in business today, and still makes collector series such as the Colonial Village Collection introduced in 1987, the Historic American Lighthouse Collection in 1991, and the Great American Carousal Collection in 1995. The company's marks have changed over the course of production, but most were used for long periods of time and lack any definitive dating marks. As such, styles and colors are more helpful in dating Lefton China."