I really enjoy drinking water with my cupped hands. Even when it's water from a water fountain or the kitchen tap, the experience feels like you're getting back to nature, drinking the water from a fresh water creek in the mountains.
However, nice things like soup, tea and Pimms don't lend themselves well to being drunk out of your hands due to heat, stickiness and a multitude of composite parts.
The Finger Bowl is in the shape of two cupped hands and is lined with a flesh coloured* smooth leathery fabric, much akin to skin. With it you can feel at one with nature as you drink your coffee in front of the tv out of your cupped hands and not even get burnt.
Fully machine washable. Is not made from severed hands.
* "Flesh" colour provided by crayola.-- theleopard, Sep 17 2007 Happy people... http://www.fotosear.../cupping-hands.html...drink with their hands. [theleopard, Sep 17 2007] (?) semi-baked http://www.lighthou...ages/bout-hand2.jpg [xandram, Sep 17 2007] [21]'s Granny service Good_20Night_20Granny_20ServiceCould be even creepier... [theleopard, Sep 17 2007] (?) Ceramic cupped hands http://gardengadget...0cupped%20hands.gifcould look like this, but with added liner (+) [xenzag, Sep 17 2007] A proper finger bowl. http://www.phoenixm...lon_finger_bowl.htm [jutta, Sep 19 2007] Found this... http://www.lifecast...ge/cupped_hands.jpgLooks a bit creepy now that you mention it... (but I think that's more to do with the hue of the skin) [theleopard, Sep 19 2007] But this is pure nature... http://img403.image...e=fingerbowldt3.pngImagine it filled with a mojito or something. Rapture! [theleopard, Sep 19 2007] If the inner surface is like the outside of fingers, it would be nice if the outer surface was contoured to fit your hands so you could cup the bowl in your hands. Ooh, in fact you could have a mould your own finger bowls kit. You could even have them making gestures or spelling stuff out in sign language. That may lessen their capacity as bowls somewhat.
"Katey, if we put one hand there like this and the other one there like that, you can bowl your elf while I give my elf a bowl job."-- marklar, Sep 17 2007 I find this idea slightly creepy.-- hippo, Sep 17 2007 Shame, it was intended to be anything but...
Nice ideas [marklar] - Make your own hands bowl. Though giving your elf a bowl job really is a bit creepy.-- theleopard, Sep 17 2007 I think what unsettles me is are the ideas of drinking out of "someone else's cupped hands" and then, between drinks, having this pair of severed hands lying around.-- hippo, Sep 17 2007 Hmmm. Do you mind if I edit it slightly..? Can't do anything about having the severed hands lying around (apart from put them in the cupboard which may be scarier if found by unsuspecting house guests) but changing the "somebody else's cupped hands" can be easily solved.-- theleopard, Sep 17 2007 How about now [hippo]?-- theleopard, Sep 17 2007 mmmm - sorry, but I find the "smooth leathery fabric, much akin to skin" similarly creepy, especially when combined with the severed hands. Maybe it's just me.-- hippo, Sep 17 2007 The last time I tried to drink with cupped hands I spilt the contents all down the front of my dress,errm I mean shirt.-- skinflaps, Sep 17 2007 Fair enough [hippo]. I had a similar thing with the old-lady-sings-you-to-sleep idea. Creepy to me, but largely not to everyone else.
Imagine the old lady bringing you a Finger Bowl of cocoa whilst you lie in the dark and pull the covers up to your eyes.-- theleopard, Sep 17 2007 Diogenes is spinning in his jar.-- ldischler, Sep 17 2007 ...and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the skin which formed on the surface of the cocoa and the 'skin' of the fake, severed hands you're drinking it out of. Meanwhile, the old lady tucks you in, singing softly... <shudder>-- hippo, Sep 17 2007 ..and upon the tip of your tongue you sensed something that wasn't too dissimilar to a big toe.-- skinflaps, Sep 17 2007 I'd like it if it were ceramic or some such material (as in [xenzag]'s and [xandram]'s links).-- bnip, Sep 18 2007 Great description, especially with the improvements (I'm rather close to adopting "not made from severed hands" as a tag line) - but in practice, this just doesn't work. I like hands, but in something that I drink or eat out of, I don't want the irregularity of fingers, the different thicknesses, the wrinkles, the place where the two hands touch - there's just too much going on here. For me, the simple ceramic bowl would be very, very hard to improve on. Maybe there's a more stylized, less naturalistic middle ground of folded glazed clay.-- jutta, Sep 18 2007 Hmm, I thought there might be some objection to that aspect of it, ie the knooks and crannies in the hands being a place for cocktail ingredients or croutons to get stuck. Perhaps the inside of the bowl can be smooth with the appearance of two cupped hands painted on to it, whilst keeping the skin-like fingers on the outside.
As for tagline; I'd be delighted.-- theleopard, Sep 18 2007 Or rubber hands within a thick clear plastic bowl.-- marklar, Sep 18 2007 I've always found it really difficult to drink water out of my cupped hands. I curl the fingers of my right hand into a cylinder and put them on the palm of my left. Fill, put mouth to top, squeeze cylindrically arranged hand shut, gob full 'o' water! Beltin!-- squeak, Sep 18 2007 I'm not convinced that you've focussed on the things that made cupped-hands such a enlivening experience (leathery skin etc). Rather than the whole fleshy aspect, I think it might be that one of the best things about cupped-handed drinking is that the liquid spills out through all those gaps - splashing out and down into the space below - it's all so deliciously dynamic.
It would be interesting to conduct an experiment where water is drunk from an obviously manmade object - for example a colander - to see whether it's the splashyness of the experience that turns us on. A difficulty in conducting such an experiment is finding a colander that doesn't drain too quickly. It needs to be slow enough to allow for transference from source to mouth, but not too slow that there's not enough splashing.
Ideally, the user should have some kind of variable control over the flow-rate - from none at all, to a full contents dump. I'm imagining a shiny stainless steel pair of runcible 1/3 spheres (a runcible 1/3 sphere is what you'd get if you sliced an orange from above into segments of 120° each and, after eating the orange, poked holes into the peel - a pair of them is what you'd have if you threw one of them away) that pivot about a hinge (the hinge would be at the intersection points of the segments).
At full intersection, the runcibility is suppressed - because the holes have been designed not to intersect, and you have a traditional, water-tight bowl, but the user can, by sliding the segments out of intersection with one another, create a far leakier bowl, and, if they are completely separated, a bowl with a hole in the bottom.
A messy solution for drinking soup in front of the television; However, you could still made this portable by supplying the pseudo-hands with a suitably large bowl into which the desired liquid can be initially poured, and into which it can be safely splashed (with abandon) back into.
This version might help soothe poor [hippo]'s unease.-- zen_tom, Sep 18 2007 //It's all so dynamic.//
Exactly. I propose: the soup hose. (Remember the splashy fun of drinking from the garden hose on hot summer days?) It might require a whole system of soup plumbing, though.
Just imagine, kids laughing madly, running through the s(ou)prinkler.-- bnip, Sep 18 2007 //nice things like soup, tea and Pimms don't lend themselves well to being drunk out of your hands//
Also, in half-seriousness, if one's hands have been severed or deformed due to some accident or trauma, then they may not work even for water. Finger bowl to the rescue!-- bnip, Sep 18 2007 i don't think i'd like drinking tea or soup from my hands, even if i could stand the heat. only because the sensations associated with hand-cupping and drinking all refer me to the recollections of drinking cold, fresh water from some outdoor source (generally). and soup or tea evoke being contained in a ceramic bowl or cup that i can warm my hands against and sip out daintily.
splashy hot soup or tea is just foolhardy. although i admit i was slightly jealous of augustus gloop in charlie and the chocolate factory for lying on a bank of sugar grass and scooping out handfuls of warm melted chocolate into his mouth. except i don't care for chocolate...
but for those still enamored of the idea of having hot liquids cup-hand style, i suggest that rubbery material they are making heating pads out of nowadays (silicone) as a sculpted one serving hands-mask that must require the assistance of someone else to fill them, but then you get the basic sensation of a) skin b) your own hands and c)being in the chocolate factory.-- k_sra, Sep 18 2007 So am I the only person in the bakery that knows what an actual 'fingerbowl' is? A fingerbowl is a moist towelette in a sealed pouch, usally handed out at resturants after finger food.
I'm surprised no one has called 'PUN!'
I'm not.
Don't like the idea though, kinda creepy.
I imagine filling it with ox blood and setting it outside for holloween.....now want one-- evilpenguin, Sep 19 2007 /is a moist towelette /
Tell me you're joking.-- Texticle, Sep 19 2007 // am I the only person in the bakery that knows what an actual 'fingerbowl' is? // [evilpenguin]
// Tell me you're joking. // [Texticle]
pengy just made me do the spew thing with a cough drop. Fortunately, the monitor was undamaged. [Texticle], should we provide the villianous antarctic birdie with a few links, or send it on its own search of medieval manners?-- lurch, Sep 19 2007 You know what would be even more awesome? Finger Bowl ads.-- croissantz, Sep 19 2007 you know what's even MORE awesome? finger bowels!
and [evil_p], thanks for the laugh! : )-- k_sra, Sep 19 2007 Illustration linked: "But this is pure nature..."-- theleopard, Sep 19 2007 //idea//[++]//Is not made from severed hands.//[-]-- Voice, Jul 04 2022 random, halfbakery