[SML] Coating for Glasses and Porcelain Tea Cups?

[jdunfee12 at yahoo.com]

In the past two shows, that I have been involved, glass broke on stage, and so we are hoping to find solutions to at least reduce the spread of glass fragments.
I can find plastic (acrylic) wine glasses and goblets, but tea cups have been elusive.
I found a few melamine ones, but they were both quite expensive ($18 cup and saucer before shipping), and the wrong kind of shape for tea cups a century ago.  There are children's sets, but they are all too small.
 I wonder if there might be a coating, that even if it does not prevent breakage, reduces the fragmentation. In our case, we never actually put liquid in the tea cups. So, perhaps it might be as simple as sloshing a little PVA (i.e. Elmer's) glue around inside.  But, I don't think that this will help prevent small fragments that are generated on the outside from being generated.
I recall seeing some light bulbs sold for rugged service, that had a silicone coating on the outside.  But, my experience with silicone has always been with a very thick kind.  Is it viable to thin it out considerably?  But, even then, it would probably be fairly dull looking coating.
I might simply use white paint, and apply a few layers.  Though, of course, that means I can't take advantage of the ornamentation available on many tea cups.  I guess I can use clear, but I suspect with several coats the appearance of the decoration underneath will suffer.

Any comments, or other ideas?
-Joe
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