Desk Job

The desk at which Bram Stoker wrote Dracula will be sold at auction in December.  The auction house expects the desk to go for between $60,000 and $80,000, so, y'know, if you're looking for a Channukah gift for your favorite blogger....

A British furniture-artist (apparently Britain has such things) has pimped out the desk, attempting to maintain its classic "essence" but also incorporating "embroidered imagery. . . including bats, a savage hound and scrolling rose thorns and buds."

I'm not sure how I feel about these "improvements."  If someone told me he was the proud owner of Bram Stoker's desk and then showed me this gothic escritoire replete with bats and bones, I would think I was being punked.  I wouldn't want to accept the idea that something so tacky would once have belonged to so famous a man of letters.

If you must buy furniture of literary significance, I understand the chair in which Philip Roth sat while composing Portnoy's Complaint will come up for bid soon.  THAT one, I might consider  reupholstering.

Joe Q. Public--Cup of Joe, That Is

Leslie Buck passed away Monday. Who's Leslie Buck? His original name was Laszlo Buch. Still nothing? OK, OK: Leslie Buck was the man who designed the classic New York coffee cup, officially known as the Anthora:







That should ring a bell for anyone who has ever lived in or watched a cop show set in New York. The Anphora was a regular part of the background noise of Big Apple life from the 1950's on (although you don't see them as much anymore), right up there with subway stations and hot-dog carts.

Thinking about Leslie Buck, though, makes us think about the ubiquity of design: Every manmade object you see or hear or taste was actually devised by somebody. We recognize this when appreciating a painting or a movie or a piece of music, but we don't stop to consider the amount of creativity that goes into populating the realm of our day-to-day existence. The famous "I-[heart symbol]-N-Y" logo? Somebody designed that! Those four musical notes at the end of every Intel commercial? Somebody composed that! The uniquely addictive taste of McDonald's french fries? Somebody concocted that!

Design is the water through which we swim, but we are generally unaware of the individual drops that fill the ocean. As you make your way through the waves, try to take notice.