Objectified Response: Glorious Antiquery

 MKI Kamenstein World of Motion Steam Engine Locomotive Train Tea Pot Kettle 

In watching the OBJECTIFIED documentary, I was struck by the contrasting ideas of of design by reduction - or the stripping away off all unnecessary trappings till only the essential remain - and the everlasting fondness for familiar comforts. 

This object, brought to you by the Tik Tok algorithm, is a stovetop kettle by the Kamenstein company designed in the style of a steam locomotive. What drives this design concept is the metaphorical parallels between the core mechanics of both a train and a kettle - the pressure built through boiling water. Despite being put in production well after steam engines had begun to be usurped by more viable modes of transportation, the warm nostalgia for what the documentary referred to as purely “analog” creations remained in a market for train-based paraphernalia.

 

While sculpting this kettle I was continually struck by the impracticality of the design. It is clumsy to access, use, and clean - in addition to having an excessive number of extraneous components that overburden what seems to be this object’s primary function; to produce tea.

At what point does an object cease to exist as a thing from which physical value is derived from its attributes, and moves into a sphere of existing purely for the resonant harmony it creates with one’s own psyche, a memento, like a paper weight, holding fast some flurried folio of one’s identity?

Through this exploration we see that this object, by presenting both as a train and a kettle, ceases to be either; it becomes an object of pure nostalgia harkening back to the values of a home brewed pot of tea and a long journey by railway.

In a race to spearhead the new and revolutionary, from a consumer perspective there is an undeniable draw to participate with the past through a performative theatre of collecting and display culture. While I’ve come to the conclusion that this kettle is an absolutely atrocious design by the standards of those featured in the documentary, I cannot deny that a part of me still wants to adopt it into my world, where I believe it might enrich my space with its playful whimsy…

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”

Alain de Botton, “The Architecture of Happiness”