Object Details
- Description
- This is a Dixie DL9540 pucker style coffee cup lid. Pucker type lids require the drinker to place his or her mouth over a protrusion with a hole in it. With these lids, the drinker does not drink directly from the cup—mouths do not make contact with the rim of the cup. Instead, one drinks from only the lid. The design of this lid is covered by patent number D379928, assigned to the James River Corporation on June 17, 1997.
- Architects and collectors Louise Harpman and Scott Specht donated 56 plastic cup lids to the National Museum of American History in 2012. Their donation is a sample from their much larger collection of “independently patented drink-through plastic cup lids,” which they began in 1984 and discussed in a 2005 essay, “Inventory / Peel, Pucker, Pinch, Puncture,” in Cabinet Magazine: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/19/harpman.php. The collectors’ categorization scheme reflects the primary way the lid design functions, which helps differentiate between the varieties and styles of lids.
- Plastic, disposable coffee cup lids and other single-use food packages reinforce the social acceptability of eating and drinking on the go in the United States and reflect increasing expectation for convenience products. Cup lids are also examples of how humble, and even disposable, objects are sometimes the result of meticulous engineering. Patents for lid innovations describe peel-back tabs and the pucker-type shapes that make room for mouths and noses, and describe the nuances of “heat retention,” “mouth comfort,” “splash reduction,” “friction fit,” and “one-handed activation.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Gift of Louise Harpman and Scott Specht
- ID Number
- 2012.3047.18
- catalog number
- 2012.3047.18
- nonaccession number
- 2012.3047
- Object Name
- lid
- Physical Description
- plastic (overall material)
- white (overall color)
- Measurements
- overall: 3/4 in x 3 7/16 in; 1.905 cm x 8.73125 cm
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Food Technology
- Food
- FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_1419896
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-a1dd-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
