Everyone Should Spend at Least One Night Sleeping in a Pile of Pancakes
It’s a well known fact that pancakes and bacon both rule for different reasons. Nothing compares to smothering your butter-doused short stack of flapjacks in maple syrup, except maybe smothering your bacon in maple syrup. When English artist Ros Cross moved to Los Angeles over 30 years ago, she discovered the same thing. Well, more precisely, she was astounded by the sheer size of the American portions she was served in her new city.
Back in the early days of her career she was working primarily with textiles as a medium. American quilting was a particular fascination, and in 1973 she quilted a piece called Pancakes, Butter, & Syrup Quilt that came with a side rug of crispy bacon. It was then displayed at what is now called the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City in 1976.
If you take a look around the internet, you will find a variety of food-based bedding designs, from eggs and bacon to a waffle to pizza, which Miley Cyrus made famous on her Instagram. I think we can thank Cross for igniting this trend.
As much as we want to believe that Cross quilted the short stack for no other reason than wanting to literally lie in a pile of pancakes, butter, and syrup (same, TBH), she's said that she was inspired by Robert Rauschenberg's Bed. To make his piece, he dripped paint down a stretched bed quilt, rumored to be his own. It was considered to be a self-portrait of sorts. In the same vein, perhaps Cross’ pancakes are supposed to be seen as a self-portrait-or maybe that’s just me, because my self-portrait would absolutely be pancakes and bacon. The quilt is made to fit a standard full size bed, but it’s not like that matters considering the one and only copy is off the market (along with the 65" x 15" bacon rug). No, I’m not jealous at all. I just want Cross to fire up the sewing machine again and make a sequel with waffles.
