Logically perhaps, a hip flask takes its name from the fact that a container for liquid (flask) is designed to be kept in a hip pocket, and the trademark design requires a slightly curved shape to fit around the hip. During the American prohibition years in the 1920s ladies would attach the hip flask to a leg with a garter, and we would have to wonder if they were called thigh flasks!

Hip flasks, however, were much the preserve of the gentry in days gone by, with the traditional curved shape giving way to a vast array of shapes and sizes. Another type of ‘gentry’ were well known for carrying hip flasks around with them in the good old days, Highland shepherds, no doubt lowland shepherds too.

The one we have here in the collection once belonged to Archie Boyle, a Glen Roy shepherd. It takes the form of a glass bottle, with a lovely basket weave cover to prevent breakage , and what we think is a silver top, though there are no markings. We think it dates back to the early 1900s, Archie was using it in the 1940s/50s. It would have been filled with uisge beath (water of life) i.e. whisky, and shared with fellow shepherds as a ‘wee dram’ – slainte.