It is pretty, but does it work?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new books shelf at my friendly local public library has a big, long, heavy, coffee-table book titled 1000 Design Classics (published in 2022). I borrowed it, and mostly enjoyed looking through their pictures and brief descriptions. Those items are listed in chronological order. There are many chairs. As shown above, there were some clunkers in it – items that are pretty but did not work well. One was the Zig-Zag chair (on page 120), designed by Gerrit Rietveld and also shown in silhouette on the cover. It’s silly because we don’t have flat bottoms. That chair needs a cushion added to make it functional, unlike the Mezzadro chair (on page 290) designed by Achille Castiglioni using the form-fitting seat from a tractor.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 1941 Chemex Coffemaker (page 167) is another clunker. The one-piece glass double-cone design  is no better than the 1937 Melitta Cone Filter holder (on page 137) meant to sit atop a separate receptacle. The Chemex is hard to clean. You need a long bottle brush.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most poorly chosen item in the book (on page 108) is the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship filled with flammable hydrogen gas rather than inert heluim. It first flew on March 4, 1936, but only flew 63 times before famously being destroyed by a fire (as shown above) during a landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. Its predecessor, the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, had the first transatlantic passenger service, and flew 590 times from 1928 to 1937.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another questionable choice (on page 183) is the 1946 Saab 92 car. Saab primarily was an aircraft company, and would better have been represented by their 1955 Saab 35 Draken double-delta jet fighter-interceptor (shown above).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet another poor choice is the 1949 de Havilland DH 106 Comet jet airliner (page 205). Three were lost in its first year of airline service, and the entire fleet grounded. Tests revealed the fuselage was subject to fatigue failure just from repeated pressurization. The aircraft had to be redesigned as the Comet 4 (shown above). Only 114 ever were built. Curiously there was a 1948 novel by Nevil Shute titled No Highway about an airliner called the Rutland Reindeer whose tail failed by fatigue. In 1951 it became a movie titled No Highway in the Sky.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

De Havilland should instead have been represented by their much more popular World War II Mosquito, a 400 mph, plywood, twin-engine fighter and bomber (shown above). 7,781 were built.