John Reed was initially interested in the puzzle jugs which seem to stretch through quite a large period of our history and got to thinking about all the pipework and complexity of the object, he set about recreating those. He started thinking about the drinking side and the social side of it, and commented that even back in the 1750's they were concerned about crime-related drinking or drink related crime.

He started to think about the fuddling cups where you have a number of vessels all linked together and the trick was to empty all three by drinking out of one, and he sort of recreated this one from a patter he saw in the V&A. This led to him thinking about social and anti social drinking…and in a flash of inspiration when he was driving down the M5 he started to think about symbols of our own culture, in particular the beer can and so he then cast this in clay with the intention to make a modern-day fuddling cup with four of these linked together.