FAQs
In a word, scarcity. There are only a few hundred left, and they’re not being made any more. Our mugs were fired in Newell, West Virginia, on the south bank of the Ohio River, by our U.S. manufacturer, Homer Laughlin China Company. The company was founded in 1871, and in 2020, the company restructured to focus on making Fiesta tableware. For obvious reasons, this isn’t a product that should be made overseas. We’ve sold almost all of the made-in-USA Homer Laughlin mugs, and when they’re gone…they’re gone.
We found the fragments used to recreate The 1917 Centennial Watch Mug™ in the surf zone at Glass Beach, aboard Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. Glass Beach takes its name from all the beach glass found there, rounded by the surf.
Physically, they’re really close; if a burning mess hall hadn’t collapsed on them, we might still be using the durable originals today. Chemically, they’re different. Our unscorched original fragments of Marine Corps mess hall porcelain from the early twentieth century have a faintly blue tint that is unique to lead-infused glazes. Homer Laughlin China Company uses only lead-free glazes, so we had to give up that aspect of historical accuracy! Geometrically, the replicas are so close to the fragment dimensions that if an intact original survived (and we’ve been looking for 10 years without finding one), it might be difficult for the naked eye to distinguish one from another.
We only offer mugs that pass Homer Laughlin China Company’s rigorous quality control program. Factory seconds of The 1917 Centennial Watch Mug™ are not offered for sale anywhere. If your mug appears defective, please email us via the “Contact” link. We’ll send you directions about how to return the mug for a free replacement. You might be interested to know that many of the historical sherds we found on Glass Beach at Guantanamo Bay included blemishes that today would make them factory seconds. These include pits in the glaze (caused by air bubbles), drooping glaze (known now as glaze sag), and idiosyncratic marks inside the mug made by the jigger, the tool that shaped the mug’s inside geometry. Circular marks in the inside bottom of the mug are a common byproduct of jiggering and are not considered defects.
Cook away—full speed ahead (but clean out the coffee residue first!) The 1917 Centennial Watch Mug™ is microwavable and ovenproof to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. One co-founder of Glass Beach Mugs, LLC, has a chef brother who is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. When we told Chef Pierce about how the Marines who drank from mugs like these went to France and saved Paris, he served us French onion soup in them.