Hail to the New York Coffee Cup!

(Please click on the photos to enlarge)


I’ve mentioned before that I love reading New York Times obituaries, because I keep finding out about wonderful people I’ve never heard of (like the man who invented the Frisbee) who have led remarkable lives.

Imagine my delight when I saw on the FRONT PAGE of The New York Times on April 30 a photo of the wonderful “We are happy to serve you” blue-and-white paper cup with the Greek design that is so familiar to New Yorkers. The headline was: “Thank Leslie Buck, Dead at 87, For the Black, No Sugar, to Go”.

I read it and learned that the man who designed the cup, Leslie Buck was not a designer and not Greek, but was a survivor of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald. His parents were killed by the Nazis. He came to the U.S. after the war and with his brother, who also survived the camps, started a paper cup manufacturing company in Mount Vernon, NY in the late 1950’s.

Leslie Buck joined the Sherri Cup Company in Kensington, Conn. in the mid-‘60’s and eventually became its director of marketing. According to the Times, “Since many of the city’s diners were owned by Greeks, Mr. Buck hit on the idea of a Classical cup in the colors of the Greek flag. Though he had no formal training in art, he executed the design himself. It was an instant success.”

He named the cup “The Anthora”, which his son said was taken from “Amphora” as filtered through Mr. Buck’s Eastern European accent.

The design of the coffee cup became an instant New York icon, eventually as famous as the Statue of Liberty, and spawned many knock-offs. The Times obit waxed rhapsodic: “A pop-culture totem, the Anthora has been enshrined in museums; its likeness has adorned tourist memorabilia like T-shirts and ceramic mugs.”

Well, back when I lived in New York in the sixties and seventies I fell in love with the Greek coffee cups found in virtually every diner, and I started collecting the different designs. (Okay, I have a little problem with collecting EVERYTHING. Just don’t tell the people who run that reality show ”Hoarders” who keep having interventions with people like me.)

In honor of Mr. Buck, who designed the Anthora, I have dug out and photographed a few of my collection above—showing both the front and back of the four designs. (The cup in the middle, holding pencils, is ceramic and I use it in my studio. It shows the original design. ) I also have a soft, flat coin purse bought by my daughter from MOMA which looks like one of these cups—a NYC in-joke referencing the paper cups held by street beggars in Manhattan to collect coins.

Now I wish I’d collected more of the fabulous blue and white cups, because the Times said that they “may now be endangered, the victim of urban gentrification.”

Collect them while you can—just imagine what they’ll sell for someday on Ebay!

And while we’re on the subject of coffee cups, I’m throwing in a photo of two charming prints of watercolors that I bought a couple days ago. The watercolors are the work of artist John Gaston, who runs Gastonart & Frame, where I get my paintings framed. It’s on the Boston Turnpike in Shrewsbury, MA, and I think that Gaston’s watercolors of his humble coffee and pie are just as good, if not better than, the famous food paintings of Wayne Thiebaud, (and a lot cheaper.)