A Porcelain Occupational Shaving Mug Identified to Mimi Imperator

Early 20th Century

bearing the name Mimi Imperator in gilt lettering, depicting a standing performer holding sheet music, set against a blue wrap.
marked T&V / France to underside.
Height 3 5/8 inches.

Mimi Imperator, formerly a renowned opera singer and impresario, had reinvented himself as a restaurateur in San Francisco, California by the early 1920s. He operated the popular Bohemian Cafe in the city's North Beach District and lived above the establishment with his wife and two sons.

On February 28, 1924, the Imperial Valley Press reported that Imperator had been kidnapped by armed men but was "rescued by police as he was about to be thrown into the bay." This was one of four related attacks on Italian Americans in San Francisco linked to a band of assassins in the Italian Quarter.

Three years later, Imperator was once again the target of mob-bourne violence: a duel was staged just outside his cafe, likely to obfuscate the gang's intentional assassination of Imperator. Ten days later, on March 16, 1927, the Bohemian Cafe was bombed, damaging the front room and shattering windows. Imperator and his family, sleeping just upstairs, were unharmed, according to the Oakland Tribune. The following June, Imperator shuttered his cafe, having "come to the conclusion that the perils of running a restaurant are too great."

This lot is located in Cincinnati.

Property from the Collection of James Carpenter, Montague, New Jersey