Araya: Salt & Pepper Shakers

Reconstructing object typology to reflect its history.



Where does salt really come from? The book Salt by Mark Kurlansky has all the answers. It goes through the history of salt and its cultural significance, revealing how this condiment was once precious enough to fuel wars and start superstitions.

Despite industrialization, harvesting salt, and pepper, still rely on human labour. Most salt produced is solar-dried seawater, relying on the tacit knowledge of its attendants. Likewise, peppercorns tend to be hand-sorted as most don’t ripen evenly. 

These shakers materialize their processes. The salt shaker mimics the hand-raked salt mounds, whereas the pepper shaker depicts peppercorn clusters. As the new forms are abstracted, I include a universal signifier to differentiate them easily - one hole for salt, and multiple holes for pepper.