A Bic lighter would normally cause as much panic in a museum as it would at an airport security checkpoint. But last year, an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art at MoMA QNS called "Humble Masterpieces" proudly displayed the device, claiming it stoked a different fire—admiration for its design.
Design? Yes, design. If you thought the term only applied to objects that went beyond the functional and into the conceptual, think again.
Paola Antonelli, curator of last year's MoMA exhibit and author of Humble Masterpieces: 100 Everyday Marvels of Design (Regan Books), says, "A real classic and great design is something that occupies a good place on earth. If it were not there, it would have to be invented. It's not redundant, it doesn't waste resources, it adds to people's lives, and people cannot live without it."
Although objects she honored in the show were things it seems we could live without—the Post-it Note, the paperclip, and the slinky among them, Antonelli also paid homage to another area of design which caught my eye. Pioneered by the Italian company Alessi, the idea of these products is "to make you smile."
I was intrigued and furnishing a new apartment. If she was correct, I'd be smiling when I walked into every room in my house.
These are "humble" pieces, after all, so I already had a version of them in the house: a salt-and-pepper shaker; contact lens case (blind as a bat); paper clip holder (she does revere the paper clip itself); a dental-floss holder (apparently they come in more than just the white plastic cases); and a soap dispenser. None of the versions I owned would be difficult to part with, so the future seemed bright....
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