Here’s a little guessing game. This is a salt or pepper shaker: So what do you think its companion shaker might be? I suspect that most people would guess the other part of this pair would be another similarly doughy creature–possibly, in the light of the associations between salt and pepper and black and white,Continue reading “For a Spicy Experience, First Take the Pants Off”
Category Archives: Theoretical Approaches to the Salt-and-Pepper World
Shake Your Booty
In recent posts, I’ve been talking about animals and other objects depicted in salt and pepper shakers as wearing various items of human clothing. This time, I’m going to look at a set that depicts a more or less human-like being who isn’t wearing quite enough clothing. I begin with the actual shakers: Readers whoContinue reading “Shake Your Booty”
About This Blog, and How to Find My Discussions of Some of Its Key Ideas
NOTE: I stopped actively adding to this blog in 2013. A quote from my first post on this blog: The purpose of this blog is to make a record of the salts and pepper sets I have collected–to account for why I collect them, to think about why they interest me both as individual setsContinue reading “About This Blog, and How to Find My Discussions of Some of Its Key Ideas”
The Smithsonian.com on Salt-and-Pepper Shaker Collecting
As well as describing the Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, this article has a few things to say about the history of novelty shakers. Would You Like Some Salt and Pepper? How About 80,000 Shakers’ Worth? | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine.
The Power of Demotic Objects to Tell Grand Narratives
Be patient, please. Eventually I am going to get around to talking about this set of salt and pepper shakers: But first, I need some context. A friend who knows of my interest in shaker sets sent me a link to a review in the New York Times Book Review of The Innocence of Objects, a bookContinue reading “The Power of Demotic Objects to Tell Grand Narratives”
Asa’s Ship Comes In
This is the salt and pepper shaker set my son Asa recently made and gave me as a Christmas present: It actually does work as a set of shakers: as the picture reveals, the mast is held in place by a cork that stops the hole where you can put salt (or pepper), and theContinue reading “Asa’s Ship Comes In”
Bøsse: In Danish, Both ‘Shaker’ and ‘Gay’
Having opened the possible closet of implication hidden in the all-male sets of salt and pepper shakers I’ve been looking at in my last few posts, I’ve found myself wondering if indeed there are any out and openly gay shaker sets in existence. A little bit of Googling led me to this pair: According toContinue reading “Bøsse: In Danish, Both ‘Shaker’ and ‘Gay’”
Bluish Women
And speaking of exotic Orientalism, how about these? When I first looked at them, I thought that they were supposed to the sort of imaginary Africans who used to appear in the cartoons and comic books of my long-ago youth–the kind whose strange customs included various sorts of bodily mutilation, including the use of tooContinue reading “Bluish Women”
Non-Specific Exotica
Since I’ve been looking at orientalist stereotypes, evocations of the mysterious East, this seems like a good time to take a look at this set: Not Asiatic, but still evocative of orientalism and the mysterious other. I think these are maybe supposed to represent some kind of Africans–or Polynesians, or Indonesians or native South Americans,Continue reading “Non-Specific Exotica”
Exotic and Smashable Fragility
I’ve previously written a number of posts about the racial stereotypes represented in my salt and pepper shaker collection: lazy Mexicans, but especially adorable Native North Americans and jolly overweight African Americans. This time, it’s the turn of the Asians. This set sums up one significant branch of the Asian world as it is depictedContinue reading “Exotic and Smashable Fragility”
Perry Nodelman 