More on Veggie People

Copacetically, just after I’ve just been talking in my last post about salt-and-pepper radishes humanized with human eyes, another blog that is also focused on salt and pepper shakers offers a recent newspaper article about “veggie people”–anthropomorphic depictions of humanized vegetables from a century ago, found on cards and other places, including,eventually, salt and pepper sets. The blog post, from Pinch, Shake, and Grind: Adventures in Salt and Pepper Shaker Collecting, can be found here:

http://saltandpeppershakers.wordpress.com/

The blog is produced by “the world’s only salt and pepper shaker museum,” located in Gatlinburg, TN:

http://www.thesaltandpeppershakermuseum.com/Home.aspx

And this is the newspaper article:

Since I began writing this blog, I’ve become aware of how difficult it is to get much sense of the history of novelty salt and pepper shakers–who had the idea of producing them, when, and why. I know shakers like the ones in my collection were imported from Japan and other Asian nations around the middle of the last century–but that’s about all I know: I can’t seem to find much in the way of books about this industry, its foundation, its artists and idea people, its markets, etc. So I’m pleased to learn a little bit about at least the prehistory of novelty shakers from this article. My thanks to the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum for finding it and posting it. I just might have to make my way down to Gatlinburg some day to see what there is to see there. and, I suppose, to be seen by any anthropomorphic radish or peach shakers that might happen to be housed there.