Design Moment: Anthora Paper Coffee Cup, circa 1963

Last year British food writer and activist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall started a campaign, “Wake up and smell the waste”, to highlight the mountain of coffee cups that end up in landfill. Some seven million disposable coffee cups are tossed into bins every day in the UK alone, and according to Fearnley-Whittingstall, only a tiny fraction are actually recycled.

It makes us nostalgic for the days when the very idea of getting a "take-out" coffee was the height of New York sophistication, something you might see in an episode of Cagney and Lacey or Hill Street Blues. And it was always the same style cup – the Anthora Paper Cup. For retro authenticity, the Anthora has appeared in modern TV classic Mad Men, which fits because it was designed in 1963 by Leslie Buck of the Sherri Cup Company.

To get the cup into New York diners, which were then mostly run by Greek Americans, this born salesman chose the blue and white of the Greek flag, a classic Grecian meander for the border and two roughly drawn amphorae. The cup gets its name from a mispronunciation of amphorae. The inscription “We are happy to serve you” in golden yellow appears over a steaming hot cup of coffee.

The Anthora was a massive success – becoming an emblematic object of the city. In 1994 alone a reported 500 million Anthora paper coffee cups were sold in New York. The Anthora died out in 2010, a victim – ironically – of the massive upsurge in takeaway coffee. Coffee chains weren’t happy to have an anonymous paper cup – they wanted their own branding to appear writ large on their cups: mobile advertising in the hands of their customers.