Building a teacup ain’t so easy

I love using Blender but every so often I do manage to find something I can’t do with it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t do it. It simply means I can’t figure out how.

What I wanted to do in this case was explode an object using the explode modifier then, somehow, get blender to take the explode simulation and play it in reverse within an animation. The only way I can figure out to do this so far is to make the whole animation go backwards. Not ideal but it still looks nifty.

Here’s what I’ve managed to get so far: