The cups and saucers are quite heavy. The cups have a very solid feel.
The glaze appears to be quite even.
The cups keep their heat very well, and warm up quite nicely under a hot tap or in a saucepan of boiling water.
The weighting and balance of the cups are quite good too.
Lastly....the cups look fantastic. Nice and white with the Illy red logo. The traditional illy circular handle looks great too.
Negative Product Points
The cups are made to withstand commercial use and thus are not as fine or finished as the Illy art series cups from Rosenthal, or Metternich.
On some cups (not all) there are one or two artifacts embeded in the glaze that may have been debris or an air bubble. This was on one base of a cup and in one handle of another.
Whilst the circle handle looks good, it can be awkward to hold for people with large / fat fingers.
Detailed Commentary
The Illy Cappuccino cups are made by IPA in Italy. They are commercial grade porcelain and each cup weighs around 280g!Thats easily twice as heavy as any product available in the department and kitchen stores. The saucers also weight 265g! I also purchased the Illy Espresso cups. Each cup weights around 145g! and the saucers weigh 145g!.
I could not find any decent porcelain cappuccino cups in Melbourne, Australia. All the cups seems much too thin and light. I enquired at Illy who quoted me $120 AU for 6 cups and saucers. I purchased these from wein-espresso though EBay for $38.50E which came up to around $63 AU.
Forget trying to buy these cups in Australia. Obviously Illy isn't interested in selling them to the public. Pity.
Buying Experience
Wein-Espresso in Germany were fantastic. I originally communicated in German, but soon found out who ever was in charge of purchases had perfect English. Their service was fast and the cups came securely packaged in a large box with plenty of that foam (in those nugget sized pieces) padding. The cups came in the original IPA boxes too.
