Your Name Here: Novelty Salt and Pepper Shakers
Some household items just seem to lend themselves to being turned into art objects. You can put a design on a towel or a sheet, but the nature of the thing itself is not altered. Not so the humble salt and pepper shaker set.
I could not even guess how many mornings could have been changed for the better if, instead of plain glass or plastic shakers, my addled mind had been jarred to a more pleasurable level of consciousness by the sight of my scrambled eggs being a-salted by the holes in the head of a cartoonish pig. Maybe I could have made something of myself, maybe someone less caffeinated and more motivated.
Now, before going any further, I must make one confession. The discriminating reader will have no doubt noticed that I made no mention of peppering my eggs from the holes in the head of a cartoonish pig. Like any good patriotic American, I put pepper on my eggs. However, I am strictly a fresh ground man. But of course, the novelty salt and pepper shaker is not about salt and pepper at all. In fact, utilitarianism is so far down the list of considerations that it really does not enter the equation at all.
The interesting thing about the novelty salt and pepper shaker set is that almost all of us have one. Uncle Fred and Aunt Ethel go to the Alamo on vacation and need to bring back a gift. Simple as that. The shaker set has jumped genres from condiment delivery system to knick knack. For most of us, that is about the extent of it.
However, at the other end of the spectrum is the collector. Like any novelty item, the shaker set has its own niche constituency, or, to put it in the vernacular, cult. As I see it, shaker collectors can break down along two different lines. In one, the shaker is a subset of an overall theme. Let’s say you are into dogs. You collect dog knick knacks of all kinds, including the salt and pepper shaker. Also, anyone into seasonal themes would fall under this rubric. The other species of collector is the one who is concerned with the specific item itself. Some people collect stamps, Elvis collects Cadillacs, and others collect salt and pepper shakers. Some people like any and all, some like tacky, some like wood. It seems that there is a shaker out there to fit any and all desires.
Salt and pepper shakers can be found on virtually every dinner table and kitchen counter. Perhaps it is this very ubiquity that makes it so appealing as pop art. The way you can tell a lot about a person by the clothes he wears or the car he drives, our chosen salt and pepper shakers say something about who we are. Now that I think of it, your favorite car has probably already been immortalized in shaker form.
Last modified January 15, 2008Author 1441 > has blogged 11 times
