Why, look at the sweet whale butter boat.

Reading the great Bruno Munari’s thoughts on fancy goods in his book Design as Art from 1966, it reminded me how much I hate objects that take the shape of artifacts – and sometimes even animals – with absolutely no relevance to the function of the object. It’s for the same reason I stopped reading Swissmiss. I quite simply couldn’t handle all the adorable whale shaped butter dishy things, sorry Swissmiss, appreciate the effort.

Here’s an excerpt from Bruno Munari’s original writings on the subject.

These are certainly not objects produced by designers, for designers do not have such raging imaginations. They confine themselves to making candlesticks that look like candlesticks. But look, what have we here? An antique gun hung on the wall as a hatstand, with a row of hooks soldered along the barrel. Or an enormous key with smaller hooks, for hanging real keys on. A cigarette lighter in the shape of a revolver, a revolver in the shape of a cigarette lighter. An umbrella like a pagoda, a table-lamp made of a clarinet (likewise, a trumpet), with a lampshade of sheet-music: take your choice, The Barber of Seville or The Magic Flute….I say, let’s buy a pipe that is really a pipe, let’s fill it with real tobacco, light a match that looks like a match and works like a match, and apply it to the pipe-pipe. Let us have a cup of coffee in a cuplike cup on a table-table near our chairlike chair, and read a good book-book.

If you feel like reading Munari’s brilliant book-book containing the above cited text and much more like it, you’re looking for Design as Art and you can find it here.

Related posts:

1. On the effects of middle fingers, temples and well shaped artifacts
2. Scientologists and cheap cigarettes
3. Matt Pyke