Magnificent Obsession

As most of my friends know (and now my classmates), I am a broken record when it comes to the the things with which I am obsessed. I tend to stop only when I bore myself. (So don't expect rants about NYU anytime soon, however I certainly could turn that into a discussion about product design.)



I find the need, once again, to champion my favorite kitchen gadget: the Tools Design lemon juicer because a) it can no longer be found at the MoMa design store and b) because I love it. The design is perfect. It is powerful, simple and elegant and it is 100% pure function.




Every household I grew up in, visited or created on my own had a lemon juicer. It usually consisted of a weapon-like cone that resembled the inverted fruit connected to a catching dish. A very functional solution.





When NK and I bought our first humble cottage, it came fully furnished and I was happy to discover this workhorse of a juicer among the melange of someone else's kitchen stuff. It required far less muscle than the other but because it was made with a number of removable parts, cleaning it was a drag. It was only bought out when multiple lemons needed to be squished.




Ok, two very viable solutions. Done. No more design thinking needed. Oh, unless you're Phillipe Starck.




Well, that was unnecessary.


Fortunately for us,Henrik Holbaek and Claus Jenson from Tools Design decided to keep thinking about the lemon juicer. A friend of theirs went to India and told the boys about a juice seller who came on their bus to sell orange juice to the tourists. The man entered the bus, softened the orange with his palms, jabbed a piece of tubing into it and pressed out a glass of juice. Henrik and Claus set about making a consumer device that did the same thing.


Even though the perfect juicer exists, designers will still attack the problem. Unfortunately the results often end up in the land of "cute".



























I am profoundly against cute when it comes to tools. Unless of course it is the Hello Kitty chainsaw.







(you can get the Tool's design lemon juicer through its manufacturer, which is rosendahl)