Continuing with this series of posts about salt and pepper shaker sets that represent animals and the clothing that they do and do not wear, there is this set, which trumps the various pantless and/or shirtless sets I have been describing by depicting creatures wearing nothing but hats (and glasses): They are, I assume, owls,Continue reading “Shirtless and Pantless, but with a Hat”
Category Archives: Made in Japan
Ambiguously Gendered: Batting for Which Team?
This shaker set is not necessarily ambiguously gay–more like ambiguously gendered. Its two baseball players (who each look a little like stereotyped angry codgers wearing too much eyeliner), might be either both male or both female or a combination of one male and one female. The shaker on the left wears a pink hat, whichContinue reading “Ambiguously Gendered: Batting for Which Team?”
Chinese Cooking Clones
As I suggested in an earlier post, alongside the exotic aliens, the other major branch of Asiatic stereotypes represented in my salt and pepper shaker collection consists of cooks. Here’s a pair: The standard stereotypical slanty eyes, so slanty that seem to be creepily without any whites, and this time accompanied by jolly rounded cheeksContinue reading “Chinese Cooking Clones”
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 pepperContinue reading “More on Veggie People”
Ethnic and Racial Slurs
Shortly after I bought my first set of salt-and-pepper shakers, I came upon this one: It’s a perfect representation of the kind of adorable miniaturized cuteness that defangs–or at least makes less immediately noticeable–its toxicity. What could be less harmful than this cheerful pair of people at rest, depicted in a world of shiny primaryContinue reading “Ethnic and Racial Slurs”
Novelty Shakers
When I began putting updates about this blog on my Facebook page, a friend there asked an excellent question: do I ever actually use any of my salts and peppers–i.e., do I ever actually put salt and/or pepper in them and then use them to shake the salt and/or the pepper over the food I’mContinue reading “Novelty Shakers”
Perry Nodelman 