I just know all you Dopers are civilized people and would never set a glass down on a piece of furniture without a coaster. Because I’m nosy and bored…
What are the coasters you use around your domicile?
A quick check shows that the ones used most often around Casa Silenus are from the Disc. The study has a stack of leather ones from the Ankh-Morpork Embassy in Wincanton while the one under my rum & Coke here in the office is ceramic and advertises “General Jobbing, Necropoli, Family Tombs, Mastabas, Needles a Specialty” by Ptaclusp & Son & Son. The living room has stacks of Firefly, Star Trek and Avengers mats. Plus a drawer full of random beer mats from trips to England and various beer festivals.
What about you? Anything of interest in your collection?
I have a number of bartender friends, so I occasionally get a pack of cardboard promotional bar mats. Right now I’ve got some Dos Equis, “Brew and a Dew” from Tullamore Dew, and Brooklyn Brewery “There’s wind in our ales” to promote that they are using renewable energy. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of what I have, since I usually have my drink in a coozie anyway.
About 20 years ago, a friend gave us a set of the absorbent stone coasters. We also have some wooden ones that we acquired somewhere along the line. And I think there’s one cork coaster. And if all else fails, there’s that old folded-paper-towel solution.
When I moved into my house and had the cable turned on they gave me one of those brochures with the lineup. 15 years later and I’m still using it as a coaster.
At one point, I had a great many beer mats from a number of drinkeries of my acquaintance through the years. And then I married a frustrated interior designer who could not exist in the same building with such juvenile bachelor plebeian drink coasters, and insisted that they be discarded and replaced with decorative coasters that matched the furniture and pulled the entire room together.
I later divorced the interior designer, but was never able to recover the vast variety of coasters that I had once owned in my youth. Today, we use little tile ones with little cork feet, and a group of five “Thirsty Stone” ones that Superior Wife obtained as a promotional item.
Ah for the days that AOL sent me a coaster every week. Nice plastic disc that you could use to subscribe but I never did. Now most of my furniture is impervious and I use a wad of paper when necessary.
We’ve got cloth coasters, wood coasters, cork coasters, pewter coasters, stone coasters, ceramic coasters, glass coasters, coasters made from shells, and one in front of me on the desk made of some sort of rope.
I can just imagine what she would have thought of Bobo’s coasters.
Mine were a set of vintage spun aluminum things that had an annoying habit of clinging to the glass for about seven inches, then falling off with a loud ringing clatter. They’ve been replaced by a far more mild-mannered and silent set of wood pucks from Target.
Well, as it happens, I just recently made acollage of my modest collection, mostly acquired on a trip to the UK in the late 80s. (for those disinclined to click, the coasters featured various brands including Salisbury Best Bitter, Gibbs Mew, John Smith’s Bitter, Becks, Lamot Pils Lager, Stones Best Bitter, Carling Black Label, Taunton Autumn Gold Cider, Alloa Ale and Ansells Bitter)
Have some delicately chip carved teak [?] from Thailand that came in a lovely little covered wooden pot - brought back from one of my Grandparents trips around the world.
I have a 12th century ceramic tile, round, 5 bats in the cardinal colors from a Chinese temple roof [it was on the end to seal up the rounded ridge] we used for decades and decades under an antique violet cache-pot acquired from my great grandmother’s house. [the cache pot, I would assume the temple tile is again blamed on my grandmother =) ]
A set of some sort of wrought/cast aluminum coasters that match a serving tray and spherical penguin patterned aluminum bar set [the penguin globe is the ice container. We might even have the rest of the bar set in a box somewhere, the shaker, jiggers and muddlers, spoons, whatever else might come with ]
Honestly though, we pretty much exclusively use Tervis double wall mugs and tall cups so we don’t get condensation or heat damage on the furniture =) And it really cuts down on random cat gravity checks as well.
One of my coasters has a story behind it. I was in the marching band in college. The trombone section had this initiation/hazing ritual where the rookies were given an object that we were supposed to carry with us at all time, and the upperclassman trombone players would check to make sure you had it if they saw you on campus outside of practice. The object I had to carry around was a coaster, one of those plastic and cork ones. At the end of the semester the band had an end of the season banquet. At the banquet I realized – I had a coaster with me. So I pulled my rookie object coaster out of my pocket, put it on the table, and set my drink on it. The trombone section leader thought that was so awesome he let me keep the coaster, and I still have it to this day. It’s sitting on my coffee table right now.
Actually, I got my other coaster in college, too. I was an intern at a company that made computer networking hardware. While I was there I got a plastic mug and coaster set that says “Jabil Circuit” on it as one of those marketing freebees vendors give out.
I’ve also got a couple of those paper bar coasters with my college’s logo on them. I think they mailed them to me at some point after I graduated, probably while begging for a donation. I don’t really use those, but I have them in case I need backup coasters.
Fuck THAT noise. I got a set of cork coasters, with a little rim around the edge to catch serious condensation puddles. Metal or glass coasters are silly IMHO you want something absorbent!
My only gripe is that after being soaked to hell and back a few times, they no longer sit flat but have a bit of convex shape now.
But actually I tend to set my coffee cup down on one of the random pieces of paper with stuff scribbled all over it that I’m not quite ready to throw out, so does that count?
I’ve got a set of 4 very nice ones plus a massive collection of bar coasters from travel. In a tiny apartment like mine, there aren’t too many needed at one time. My alumni group changed the bar we use for football meet-ups and there’s definitely some hard feelings so I’m using up those leftover coasters now
There’s no need for a coaster in my house. All horizontal surfaces are made of material impervious to water. I can’t imagine why you would want any other surface that could be so easily marred by moisture.
I had glass tops made for all our wood furniture to keep the surfaces from getting damaged. We still use coasters because leaving rings on the glass just makes for one more thing to have to clean up.
The coaster I am using right now is a turquoise blue round ceramic tile which has an Arabic geometric design on it. I got a set of four of them when I visited Portugal a couple years ago.
My husband’s favorite is a large thick square one made of some sort of resin, which is a reproduction of an old Roman tile. It’s got an image of a red peacock-like bird on it. That set was a gift from a friend of mine. We visited the Getty museum together and she noticed me admiring them in the gift shop but I did not buy any, so she got me a set for Christmas.
We have a beautiful set of colorful laminated wood ones from India, which were a gift to my husband from the parents of one of his students. Two have an elephant on them and the other two have camels. They’re almost too nice to use.
I also have a couple sets of the cheap cardboard bar ones from two breweries I visited in Belgium. The ones from Rodenbach have some rather risque cartoon images on them.
A set of four that have leather bottoms and fabric tops stitched to them. The tops have some sort of Native American designs.
A couple of cheap plastic coasters that were handed out at a Portland Thorns game.
Two thin wooden ones that I made out of leftover maple, cherry, etc., and put felt feet on. They sit on the dining room table and look like miniature cutting boards.
Some glass coasters that we made at a glass-making class here locally.
