Industrial design historian Russell Flinchum and design critic Alexandra Lange take on this essential, often aggravating appliance.
Is your coffeemaker a drip? Does poor design short-circuit the satisfaction of your morning java? Read on for some classic coffeemaker shortcomings and how to get the right results when upgrading your caffeine machine.
Russell Flinchum: My goal was a simple one: to have a cup of hot, freshly ground and brewed coffee awaiting me at a regular hour in the morning. I did what I felt was a thorough investigation before ordering my Cuisinart Grind & Brew with the thermal carafe. But my experience has taught me a few lessons.
The first is not to be cheap. I chose the less-expensive grinder with the whirring blades that approximate the sound of an air-raid siren once the coffee is ground.
I also learned to make sure locking mechanisms actually lock. The basket that holds the filter on my machine is mounted on a spring-loaded bracket. If the catch is not firmly in place, one in eight times the basket will partially eject, covering the counter with hot, partially brewed coffee and grounds.
Alexandra Lange: My goal was even simpler: I bought my coffeemaker, a Rowenta designed by British minimalist Jasper Morrison, based solely on looks. It was white, it was dead simple—just one button!—and it went with my newly remodeled kitchen.
RF: If I saw a coffeemaker with a single button, my question would be, how much do I have to do before I get to press that single button?
AL: What you give up is an automatic timer. And it isn’t the one button that is the problem. It is things like no water indicator on the outside of the machine. That was fine when I had a glass carafe, but it broke (as they always do), and I could only get a thermal replacement, which has no water-level markings. Now, to see if I have poured the right amount of water into the coffeemaker, I have to stand on my tippy toes and peer into the depths of the machine, which is difficult if you are short (like me) and park your machine at the back of the counter (like most people do).
Also, the plastic on the lid and handle of the carafe is gray, which I assumed they chose because white would stain. But even the gray stains! And I always tangle with the superminimal lid. You’re supposed to be able to turn it with one thumb so that you can pour a cup of coffee single-handed. But it takes a giant’s thumb, so I always have to find a place to set the carafe down so that I can open the lid with two hands—while not burning my countertop. If I turn it too far, the lid falls off, spilling coffee everywhere.
Which is why we went to survey the marketplace at a typical home superstore, hoping to find something better out there. We evaluated the ergonomics; unfortunately, retailers don’t let you test the most important thing—taste.
RF: It’s clear to me that this is not a “one size fits all” proposition. All the coffeemakers we looked at—12-cup automatic-drip machines—revealed that an industrial designer had been involved, but none seemed to have functionality as their priority. My guess is that most coffeemakers are purchased in a big-box store setting, where the machines have to function as their own salesperson. Which means they have to get by on looks and “affordances,” as they were once called.
All the models were ridiculously tall when the lid on top was opened; an average of 22 inches, which is a full 4 inches greater than the standard distance between counters and upper cabinets. Several of the more appealing models had a small footprint but could only be used by turning the coffeemaker sideways, meaning you would need double the footprint to access the coffee basket.
AL: Pulling out the machine every morning would really bother me. What I like about mine is that it just sits there quietly on the counter, ready and waiting. All the machines now are so boss, for lack of a better word: rounded and bulging and black.
My favorite on looks alone was the Krups KM4065. It was the shortest and among the slimmest, but most important, it uses gray rather than black plastic with the stainless steel, which makes the whole thing recede visually. It has nice big buttons angled upward toward the user. But still, the thermal version had no outside water-level indicator, it was too tall with the lid up, and the coffee basket was really hard to remove for cleaning.
RF: The Krups was the only machine with any real visual refinement—for example, the gentle tapering of the glass carafe—and the only machine that didn’t seem overtly masculine. This strikes me as bizarre considering women must easily constitute half of the purchasers and users of these machines.
The penchant for stainless steel has become absurd, in that it’s there more to match the fancy fridge than to provide a scratch-resistant surface. The Krups’ large, unadorned, unsigned front was even more appealing in light of the busyness of some of the others, especially the “vintage styling” of several of the Cuisinart models, which meant using a toggle switch—rather than a start button—to begin the brewing process.
AL: Initially I also liked the KitchenAid KCM111OB, which has an oval footprint and a nicely integrated carafe and housing. It improves on the Cuisinart with its manually operated latch for the basket. It has a see-through water container that you can remove to clean. But in order to remove the water container to fill it up you have to pull the whole machine forward on the counter. This reveals how deep it really is—it looks so tidy because they have put all the junk in the trunk.
And even though it’s been tarted up with stainless steel, it is still mostly plastic. On the display model, the lid was not shutting completely, as if the hinge had already given up.
RF: It’s funny that venerable Mr. Coffee seems to be one of the best options, and not the deluxe but the cheaper CGX20. It is compact, the controls are simple and clear (although the white version has buttons in a slightly off-white shade that makes them look pre-stained, and they are “droopy” because of poor alignment).
So rather than attempting to “have it all,” as I did, in a machine that wedges grinder, brewer, and timer into one unit for $130, you can buy the Mr. Coffee, plus a thermal carafe that suits your style, and still have about $40 left over to buy a rather nice burr grinder like the Cuisinart DBM-8. I know you like the $60 Magnussen carafe by Stelton, but I think the spout leaks.
AL: None of these coffeemakers looks as nice as my Rowenta. To get simplicity, you have to go over to the pod coffeemakers, which cost three times as much, make a quarter of the coffee, and create daily packaging waste.
RF: As I am thoroughly pleased with my vintage Magnalite water kettle, I might just return to the first coffeemaker I ever purchased, a Chemex. But not without a separate thermal carafe as well!
AL: So what have we learned, if readers are inspired to upgrade their own coffee-making experience?
Get the shortest coffeemaker you can find. If you are short, this is doubly important. Look for one with an exterior water-level indicator. Know yourself: How picky are you about coffee? Do the beans need to be ground that day? Do you mind if your brew sits around cooking into sludge on a hot plate? Your preferences may raise the price tag, but overall, there is little reason to pay more than $100. And last but not least: Don’t try to buy your next machine online. Coffeemakers may seem simple, but purchasing the wrong one is a good way to ruin every morning.
Brown.
Not a glamorous color. One that has been sidelined in the design world in favor of black, gray, cobalt and orange. But in the 1950s, brown meant something different. Graphic designer Paul Rand used it for the UPS brand, suggesting no-nonsense reliability, the democratic pleasure of the brown cardboard box.
Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss streamlined his wardrobe to include only brown suits, which allowed him to travel easily (and without wardrobe malfunctions) between industrial clients in the Midwest and banking clients in New York.
Alison Walker is a medievalist by profession, so perhaps that historical mind-set explains why her coffeepot is a Chemex (continuously manufactured since 1941), her bread pan is a green enamel Copco (designed by Michael Lax in 1960), and she’s a little bit obsessed with vintage recipes. On Bit of Butter, the thrifting blog she writes with her husband, Kevin Eustice, she explains, “Part of the reason why I love vintage recipes, especially handwritten ones, is that they’re not as rigid as the recipes in today’s cookbooks. …Contemporary cookbooks…overexplain every slice and dice.”
So it stands to reason that one of Walker’s favorite uses for that Copco pan is banana bread, adapted from the 1962 Good Housekeeping Cookbook (and ideal to make ahead for breakfast on Black Friday). The pan’s heavy cast-iron core crisps the bread all over. The built-in cast-iron handles make it easy to pull out of the oven with pot holders. And the enamel—an attractive olive green—makes it pretty enough to plop down on the table. The same qualities apply to Walker’s midcentury butter warmer, an enameled metal pitcher with a long handle and pour spout that works just as well for stovetop gravy as it does for hot cocoa or melted butter. Why get out the silver when enamel looks just fine?
Copco is one of many brands popular in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s that featured bright colors, thoughtful design, and lots of specialized shapes. Originally manufactured in Europe, these lines were quickly adopted by American home cooks seeking to simplify their meals and minimize the dishwashing. The advent of pieces that married stylish form and function meant that casseroles, stews, sauces, and cakes no longer had to be transferred from pot to porcelain dish—the cookware and serveware were one. Dansk Kobenstyle, introduced in 1957, even includes pot lids that double as trivets for the buffet. Descoware, made in Belgium, was Julia Child’s pick: On her stove at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History sits a big orange pot she used on her pioneering television show. Other makers of the era, each with its partisans, include Dru Holland, French Cousances, original Le Creuset, and the less decorative, sturdier American-made Griswold.
Walker and Eustice are not alone in their obsession with vintage midcentury cookware (which they sell through their Etsy shop, also named Bit of Butter). Search these vintage brand names on Chowhound, and you’ll find a community engaged in equal parts nostalgia and design debate. The nostalgia is for food that people can’t imagine cooked in any other vessel. My grandmother, for example, always makes her perfectly cubed cheesy potatoes in a wide, round yellow Dansk buffet server. The potatoes turn out as golden as the dish, yet never browned. My Aunt Merit uses her orange Dansk rectangular dish for lasagna: The sides are higher than those of typical 9-by-13 pans, so there’s less chance of cheese bubbling over and burning. For Thanksgiving last year, I served sweet-and-spicy sweet potatoes in a red buffet server, a symphony of earth tones. Sunita Rai Khapre, who sells all types of vintage cookware on eBay at Asaaan Bazaar, swears that her Griswold Dutch oven turns ordinary stir-fried Indian cauliflower into something spectacular.
The design debate is multipronged. When my mother-in-law bequeathed quantities of flame-orange vintage Le Creuset to my sister-in-law, I didn’t mind, as I find Le Creuset too heavy for daily use. (If I can’t tilt the saucepan one-handed, I don’t want it.) Dansk Kobenstyle, by contrast, is made of enameled steel rather than cast iron, so the pieces are lightweight. According to design writer Sarah Froelich, whose 2010 MFA thesis is thought to be the first history of Dansk, that was precisely the point: Dansk founder Ted Nierenberg asked designer Jens Quistgaard to lighten up the traditional cast iron, thinking of the thin steel salad bowls then made by Krenit. The cross handles on Dansk’s lids are similarly pared down and elegantly curved.
But there are trade-offs for lightness. It is rare to find vintage Dansk without chips around the edge where the colored exterior meets the white interior. And those slim handles can be hard to grip and hot to the touch. Copco has saucepans with wood handles that won’t heat up. Descoware split the difference, as it is a third lighter than Le Creuset but has thicker cast-iron construction and wood handles like Copco.
Another reason for vintage cookware’s popularity is price. Brand-new Le Creuset can run several hundred dollars for a good-size Dutch oven. Walker started her Copco collection after finding a frying pan at her local Seattle Goodwill; the same pan would be $40 on Etsy or eBay. A Kobenstyle Dutch oven on Etsy can be $25 to $45, baking pans slightly more. Descoware and Dru Holland start at around $50 for a Dutch oven. And as Walker discovered, local secondhand stores can be a gold mine: Froelich contends that prices for Dansk, for example, remain low because people don’t realize the value of what they have, and sell it cheaply at these shops, where it is scooped up by knowledgeable thrifters. With vintage finds, you can kit out your kitchen for the price of a single new enamel pot.
Many midcentury-modern tchotchkes just sit on the shelf, or come out for a cocktail party. But these pots and pans are the workhorses of the genre. Television shows like Mad Men have sparked a craze for 1960s barware, but much less attention has been paid—so far—to the pots in which the Drapers’ housekeeper, Carla, fixed those unhealthy meals. Khapre, for one, loves the domestic history embedded in vintage pots and pans: “Something that is 30 or 40 years old and still looks so good, available for less than the price of a Starbucks coffee, I cannot resist.” Happy thrifty Thanksgiving!
Yesterday I awoke to a stream of Twitter messages about the early Tuesday raid of Occupy Wall Street. Mayor Bloomberg was set to address the press about the raid at 8 a.m. Mayor Bloomberg had been scheduled to kick off the “Zoning the City” conference I planned to attend at 8:30 a.m. I decided there was no rush to get to midtown: there was no way he was going to make both.
What can you say about cities in an 85-minute documentary? In Urbanized, third in director Gary Hustwit’s design trilogy, a little of everything and not much. Theme after theme — sanitation, housing, bus rapid transit, bicycles, parks — each connected to a single city by a specific talking head, is raised and then dropped. We drift in space and in time, transitions often made by a felicitous reference that sends us from continent to continent. We don’t build from small-scale, ground-up interventions, like community gardens in Detroit, to large-scale professional efforts like city planning chair Amanda Burden’s rezoning of New York. We don’t move in spatio-economic terms from the slums of the second and third world (Mumbai, Cape Town, Bogota) to the towers of Beijing. Or vice versa, tracing bus rapid transit in New York back to BRT in Bogota (or, for that matter, in Curitiba, Brazil, a previous international favorite with trickle-up ideas). Only in one case, Elemental’s Chilean low-income housing project, do we see numbers. Nothing builds, except a simultaneous sense of wonder and frustration. After an hour, I was restless, as it was hard to sustain feature-length interest without a story arc.
Two great tastes don’t always taste great together. The same can be true for design collaborations. Heath Ceramics are beautiful. Alabama Chanin textiles are beautiful. Their respective designers, Catherine Bailey and Natalie Chanin, are friends. But could the twain meet?
First attempts were not promising. Alabama Chanin clothes and linens deploy embroidery and appliqué in a modern, layered, bohemian way. The embellishments are frequently mapped out with a stencil, and Bailey initially thought they might use the stencils on her company’s classic Coupe dinnerware.“Natalie transfers graphical images by making a stencil and spraying paint on it, but when we stenciled the plates it didn’t look crafted,” Bailey says. “It looked like spray-painted graphics.” Bailey quickly realized she needed a better way to translate the exacting techniques used by Chanin’s cast of local talent in and around Florence, Ala.
The final product had to be made by hand, line by line, just as Chanin’s textiles are produced stitch by careful stitch. Bailey calls the process “etching,” but it is closely related to the sgraffito technique used to decorate walls since the Classical era. In architecture, two layers of tinted plaster are applied to the wall, and then a craftsman scrapes through the top coat to reveal the color beneath. For the new ceramics, a white glaze is sprayed over a base coat of blue, red or gray and an artist then scratches through the top layer with a metal point, exposing the color below. There are no templates: the maker has to look at an example plate and recreate it as best as he or she can, just like Chanin’s stitchers. “The spacing of the marks, depth of the etching and overall feel of the pattern are all expressed by the maker of each piece,” Bailey says.
The collection, which also includes organic cotton tablecloths, place mats and napkins designed by Chanin, is available online and at Heath stores. Among the etched pieces are a shallow bowl, a dinner plate and a bread and butter plate with one of three different traditional embroidery motifs: small suns, called buttonhole eyelets; small stars, called whip-stitched eyelets; and free-form dots, which look like bubbles on the surface of the plate. The line also features unpatterned pieces in similar colored glazes. Bailey describes the blue as “denimy.” Chanin says: “It feels like it has a lot of history to it, like a blue you might find on a worn porch in the South.” The red, on the other hand, is the color of the Alabama soil Emmylou Harris was referring to in “Red Dirt Girl”: an earthy maroon.
The new colors and patterns are integrated with classic Heath shades like Opaque White, from the company founder Edith Heath’s original palette. “It’s not an exercise in matching, but in layering,” Bailey says. “You can’t get bowls and plates in the same pattern, so ideally you could layer three different colors.”
That’s how Chanin plans to use the collection in her own kitchen, currently undergoing a renovation and expansion that employs Heath’s white half-matte, half-gloss tile. “Food is an important part of who I am in my life, and Cathy and I talked about that as part of our collaboration,” she says. Her first two books (the third, “Alabama Studio Sewing & Design,” will be available in spring 2012) included recipes alongside the sewing projects. “It feels right that we should work on the tabletop.”
The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman at The Yale School of Architecture
What does it say about an architect’s career if his best-known work, the largest image in a half-century retrospective, is a photo-collage of Mies van der Rohe’s 1956 Crown Hall, sinking slowly beneath the waters of Lake Michigan? I’ll tell you what I think it says about Stanley Tigerman: He’s better as a satirist than as an architect. And it isn’t only me that might have preferred a show titled, “The Provocations of Stanley Tigerman.”
On October 20, Architecture Research Office will be presented with the 2011 National Design Award for Architecture Design. ARO, founded in 1993 by Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky, is a New York–based firm with an exceptionally broad portfolio, ranging from creating new guidelines for design excellence in the federal government to renovating Donald Judd’s Spring Street studio, with theaters, synagogues, and a new dormitory for Tulane University in between. ARO — which added Kim Yao as a third partner earlier this year — is perhaps best known for participating in the Museum of Modern Art’s “Rising Currents” exhibition, for which the group studied managing climate change on the streets of Lower Manhattan. Alexandra Lange spoke to Cassell and Yarinksy on October 11 about the award and their work for New York City.
The line of photographers started at the parking lot, setting up tripods in the thick, green grass at the edge. More occupied the median, and still more crowded the interior, blocking the delicate, cantilevered bridge so that few could pass. And yet, it was not a disappointment. The traffic still flowed. A few cars on the underutilized roadway in front. A mass around the information desk, drawn there despite there being no need for flight information. Steady streams up the shallow steps. And then, dispersion. Up the stairs to the Lisbon Lounge and the Paris Cafe, stripped to their chrome light fixtures and glazed tiles. Down the stairs to the red ilets of seating, facing another iris of information. Behind the iris: an expanse of gray gravel, and the dull curve of the JetBlue terminal. Where once there was a view of flight, now there is just a wall, and not even one activated, as the lifted wings are here, by the movement of people. Beyond the lounge, two tubes with violent red carpet and a wash of white light. No one seemed to be able to decide on the proper pace. Kids ran. Adults strolled. More photographers blocked the opening. And again a disappointing end. An elevator. A staircase. No planes in sight.
Last week, Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes linked to a new entry on Pentagram’s blog about partner Abbott Miller’s identity and website for the Barnes Foundation, in advance of the storied collection’s planned re-opening in Philadelphia in May 2012 in a Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects-designed building. Green picked out and picked on a quote from Miller, who said the new identity, with its irregular line of framed letters, recalls “the DNA of Dr. Barnes’s vision.” “They killed the Barnes, saved the DNA?” he tweeted.
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