John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of the Design, declared the object which he thinks is the greatest design. In fact, you probably have one. Some people have more than one. Most of the time, however, people don’t really collect them, they multiply in the cover of the night.
To me, the all-time greatest design object is the grid that divides the utensils in your silverware drawer. It’s so humble I’m not even sure there is a name for it. But the minute you see it, you know exactly which job it is meant to do. Bravo!
Really? This thing?
Truth be told: in my youth it doubled as other things. We used them for stalls for tiny plastic farm animals, and found many uses in the use and maintenance of Star Wars action figures . It could be berths on a very large vehicle, the weapons storage bunker, or countless other things. Maybe we could have actually used it for silver ware. My mother has probably had the same one for thirty years. It is eggshell white. Prior to it, there was an avocado one that eventually cracked.
Now, I see many newfangled versions. There is a bamboo version of whatever this thingie is. It does not have the different shapes carved into it, just rectangular slots. Someone might be a little more free form on what goes well, but to perpetually structured people, that might be too much to handle. There might be some mental lapse or panic. I think the old basic might be a little unposh to some, but until someone makes a hand carved version out of olive wood with the proper slots, or a more progressive version comes out of Scandanavia, the original plastic version rules.
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