I was staying with German friends in Kerry when Claudio told me that he collected espresso cups, and had quite a sizeable collection of them. He wondered if there might be an Irish one to add. I was most dubious about the idea, and said that although Illy Cafe had been in my valley for a decade at a drive of some 20 kilometers away, I thought it unlikely. That morning we went to a cafe on Valentia Island and to my surprise I was given an espresso in a fully Irish espresso cup. It wasn’t new and evincing nostalgia, but probably one from the original Bewley’s Cafe on Grafton Street in the bloom of cafe society, and probably the only place of its kind in Dublin. I was so enchanted with the coincidence that I asked the waitress if I could buy it for Claudio’s collection. She in turn was so delighted that such a collection might exist at all, that she washed and dried the cup and gave it to me.
Source: A Bewley’s Coffee Cup