Gus P. Menger Cupping Portrait — Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co., Photo by Studer, 1938

A large formal black-and-white studio portrait of G. P. Menger, president of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company, double-matted in cream with a gold inner accent inside a dark-stained wood frame. The identification is confirmed by the caption of the San Antonio Express-News, 10 October 1938 (“Knows His Java and His Mocha Too”): “Mr. G. P. Menger, president, Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company ‘Taste-Testing’ samples for H & H, Sam Houston and Texas Girl blends. An expert in this work, Mr. Menger has been cup testing coffee for 26 years. Dave Crow, supervisor of cafe department, pouring. —Photo by Studer.”

The same image ran in the newspaper; the framed print is the studio original or a print from the same sitting. The photographer is Studer, a San Antonio studio. The caption dates Menger’s cup-testing practice to 26 years as of 1938 — placing its start at 1912, the year of the Hoffmann-Hayman founding.

Menger is pictured in a dark suit with pocket square, round wire-rimmed spectacles, holding a small white porcelain cupping cup in his right hand and a black-handled cupping spoon in his left — the classic two-hand cupping-table evaluation pose — bent over a large cascading mound of whole roasted coffee beans on a polished dark bench. At lower left, the cast-iron housing of a small shop-counter sample grinder. Studio gray backdrop lit from upper left.

Together with the UTSA cupping-table photograph showing Gus and Albert Menger at work, and the loose print of an unidentified man at the drum roaster, this is the third “person evaluating the coffee” image in the Reference gallery.