Some small town museums can come across as very cluttered. They tend to display most of their artifacts, often lovingly donated by locals, instead of doing as larger museums do: keeping the bulk of artifacts stored away for preservation or research purposes and leaving only a handful of carefully curated items on display. These small, often volunteer-run museums can provide fascinating insight into what the local community thinks are important to preserve.
As someone who is interested in material history, I am at times frustrated and at others gleeful in these types of museums. I’m frustrated because I often encounter artifacts that seem like they have an interesting story but are displayed with no context and/or in a way that’s hard for me to see (poor lighting, cluttered cases), so I may walk away feeling thwarted instead of enlightened. I’m gleeful, though, when I encounter a type of object I know something about, particularly ones I’ve only ever read about in books and had never seen in person. I often can’t help myself and start interpreting in my excitement to any hapless other visitors around me.
Such was the case in the Fred Light Museum in Battleford, Saskatchewan, when I ran into this case of porcelain teacups. I’ve never seen so many moustache cups in one place! In short, moustache cups were popular in the last few decades of the 19th century and can be described as elegant sippy cups for men. The moustaches of the Victorian era were at times large and sometimes carefully coaxed into shape by moustache wax – wax that would melt if it encountered hot liquids like tea. The addition of a porcelain bar or removable metal piece on top of a tea cup would protect the moustache from being damaged while the man drank. #Victorianproblems, am I right?
History Research Shenanigans 
Awesome, I want one.