Starbucks São Paulo mug: Discovery Series
The Discovery Series São Paulo mug shows a mortadella sandwich, coxinhas, MASP on its red supports, a lamp post with three hanging lanterns like Liberdade's street lamps, a caipirinha-like drink, a helicopter and a clock-towered station that looks like Luz Station.
- Series
- Discovery Series
- Place
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Type
- Mug
- Released
- Not confirmed
- Capacity
- 14 fl ozStarbucks's Discovery Series launch story calls it the 14-ounce ceramic mug
- SKU
- Not confirmed
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The clause under MASP that nobody had read
In 1990, speaking at the University of São Paulo's architecture school, Lina Bo Bardi said she was ashamed whenever people called MASP the largest free span in the world [10]. She had never wanted it, she said. The land had been donated on condition that it keep a belvedere looking out over São Paulo, so her building could not stand on columns [10]. Her husband, the museum's director, even named the donor: Joaquim Eugênio de Lima [10]. Nobody had ever published the clause. The Italian historian Daniele Pisani went looking for it, and according to him Eugênio de Lima never owned the plot, and its real owner sold it to the city under a law of May 1911 [10]. Pisani also found an unpublished typescript by Lina. In it she wrote that load-bearing walls or hidden columns under the four 70-metre beams would have spoiled the building's “cleanness” [10]. The open ground beneath the red frame on the São Paulo mug (6) may have been her choice all along.
The mug does not label its drawings, so connecting this one to the story is our reading.
What's on the mug
- 1SÃO PAULO
The city name is printed in light blue capitals, SÃO on top of PAULO, with the tilde on the A, over a large dark green circle in the middle of the front.
- 2Lamp post with three hanging lanterns (looks like Liberdade's street lamps)
An orange-red post curves up on the left to a pink-red crossbar with a wavy blue top, and three round yellow lanterns hang from it. The post with three hanging lanterns resembles the street lamps of Liberdade, the Japanese-Brazilian district, which a 2024 Gazeta do Povo report describes as “postes vermelhos, com três luminárias japonesas em cada” (red posts, with three Japanese lanterns on each). The district's entrance is marked by a red torii, but a torii has no hanging lanterns, and the drawing is simplified. The mug doesn't name it.[9][5]
- 3Mortadella sandwich
A tall sandwich in a round bun, with a thick stack of pink folded meat under a wavy yellow-green layer (likely cheese), sits on top of the striped canopy of the street-food cart below it. The pink layered filling matches the mortadella sandwich, a São Paulo specialty linked to the Municipal Market (Mercadão). The mug doesn't name the market.[2]
- 4Street-food vendor with a cart
A man in a blue patterned cap, yellow vest and blue trousers walks beside a small wheeled cart piled with food, under a pink-and-white striped canopy on poles; a vendor in a yellow-orange hat and blue shirt stands behind it. The food on the cart is too small to identify.
- 5Coxinhas
Golden fried snacks, most of them teardrop-shaped with pointed tops, float above the skyline on the left of the front, and more appear at the right edge of the Side photo. The teardrop shape and fried crust match the coxinha, a chicken snack from São Paulo state. The mug doesn't name them.[1]
- 6São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
To the right of the sandwich, an orange-red frame of two posts and a beam holds up a raised box with blue windows, and a yellow strip with small walking figures runs underneath. The raised box on red supports with open ground below matches MASP on Avenida Paulista, whose gallery hangs from four red pillars and two beams. The mug doesn't name it.[3][4]
- 7Old colourful houses and skyscrapers
Lower left of the front shows a row of two- and three-storey houses in orange, yellow and pink with striped awnings and arched doors, with round orange trees in front; tall blue and grey towers rise behind them. No single building can be identified.
- 8Helicopter Side view
An orange helicopter with a blue rotor flies at the top left of the Side photo, and the same helicopter appears at the top right of the Back photo. It may refer to the city's many private helicopters; an older, undated business-travel report says they form one of the largest fleets in the world. The mug doesn't say so.[8]
- 9Clouds with coloured rain Side view
Two clouds, one pink and one blue with rainbow stripes, drop rain in pink, orange, yellow and blue drops over the skyline.
- 10Skyline with a low white dome beside a lake Side view
Below the clouds, a band of towers in red, pink and blue sits behind a blue lake edged with round trees, and on the right a low white dome rises over striped tiers. The dome could be one of several São Paulo buildings and is not identified here.
- 11Mural with a painted figure Side view
At the lower left of the Side photo, a wall painted in purple, blue and pink shows a large figure, next to a red brick building. The photo does not show enough of it to name a place.
- 12Glass with a lime slice (looks like a caipirinha) Side view
A short orange-rimmed glass holds a pale drink, with a green lime slice and splashes at its rim. It looks like a caipirinha, the Brazilian cocktail of cachaça, sugar and lime, but the drawing does not show what is in the glass. The mug doesn't name it.[6]
- 13Row of colourful shopfronts Side view
Right of the glass, a row of narrow two-storey shopfronts in pink, yellow, orange and blue with arched windows and awnings runs to a taller pagoda-like building at the right edge.
- 14Coffee bag spilling beans Back view
Near the handle on the Back photo, a tipped-over patterned bag in pink, blue and orange pours red-brown coffee beans into the air above the station building.
- 15Long station building with a clock tower (looks like Luz Station) Back view
A long two-storey building in yellow and orange with rows of arched windows has a tall clock tower with a pointed roof toward its right end and smaller towers along the roof. It looks like Luz Station, the railway station whose clock tower once dominated the city skyline, but another clock-towered building cannot be ruled out. The mug doesn't name it.[7]
- 16Two cyclists Back view
Below the coffee bag, two people ride bicycles with patterned wheels along a yellow path toward a flowering tree and a bench.
The photos do not show the bottom of the mug, so any base text is unread. Vertical printing beside the handle on the Back photo is too dark and angled to read, and the handle hides a narrow strip of the design.
Collector notes
- The front prints only SÃO PAULO with the tilde; the series wording, if any, sits beside the handle and on the base, which these photos do not let us read, so check those before buying.
- To check a listing against this design, look at the front: SÃO PAULO in light blue on a dark green circle, three yellow lanterns above it, and a mortadella sandwich on a striped cart canopy to the right.
Before you buy
The photos here do not show the base, and the print beside the handle is too dark to read, so ask the seller for both. The inside looks orange in the photo. A matching mug has SÃO PAULO in light blue on a dark green circle, three yellow lanterns above it, and the red-framed museum just right of a mortadella sandwich.
About the Discovery Series
Sources
- Coxinha (Wikipedia)
- Mortadella sandwich (Wikipedia)
- São Paulo Museum of Art (Architectuul)
- São Paulo Museum of Art (Wikipedia)
- Liberdade (district of São Paulo) (Wikipedia)
- Caipirinha (Wikipedia)
- Luz Station (Wikipedia)
- Helicopters: Congested skies in Sao Paulo (Voyages d'Affaires)
- Disputa identitária: luminárias japonesas são retiradas a pedido da militância negra em São Paulo (Gazeta do Povo, 26 Nov 2024)
- Daniele Pisani, “MASP: breve história de um mito” (Projeto no. 439, 2017)
