"All I want for Christmas is the Nairn Museum potato flask. Showcased as part of the Highland museum's virtual Advent calendar on Instagram last week, it's a late-18th-century Staffordshire pottery flask to be filled with strong drink and used to toast a safe journey for a traveller shaped like a very realistic, knobbly spud, complete with green bits. The benefactor who donated the flask apparently explained it was so ugly that no one in his family wanted to inherit it."
"More than 15,000 Instagram likers beg to differ, including me: I desperately covet this beauteous and useful tuber, surely the ideal emotional support accessory for the season's more trying social engagements. As the museum's representative explains, the potato was seen as a very fashionable vegetable back then, and I think we need to think hard about that: why isn't it now? It might be the most valuable player on the Christmas dining table (don't even think about arguing), but it's cruelly taken for granted."
"Have we ever considered the potato as a gift, an aesthetic, a mood? How hard would it be to make a replica potato flask? What is capitalism for if it can't provide me with this? I've checked the craft site Etsy but no one seems to have fully exploited the potato's potential as a creative muse, which is disappointing (I was tempted by a potato calendar, though 12 stunning photos of spuds). Thwarted, I've come up with another idea: why don't we add viral potato bed to our Christmas wishlists? A recent TikTok trend, the potato bed is an upside-down fitted sheet, its elasticated edges bolstered with pillows to make walls much like a baked-potato skin, the base filled with blankets and duvets. You put yourself in making you the cheesy beans or tuna mayo, I suppose then top it off with another duvet, creating a cosy single-occupancy nest."
The Nairn Museum potato flask is a late-18th-century Staffordshire pottery vessel shaped like a realistic, knobbly potato intended to be filled with strong drink and used to toast a traveller's safe journey. A benefactor declined to inherit it, yet the flask attracted more than 15,000 Instagram likes and widespread coveting. The potato was fashionable in that period and now feels underappreciated despite centrality to the Christmas table. The writer imagines replicas and criticizes the marketplace for not supplying desirable potato-themed goods. A TikTok potato-bed trend repurposes an upside-down fitted sheet and pillows into a cosy, single-occupancy nest filled with blankets and duvets.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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