Just think about it
LONDON — For each of the last 11 years, Sir Terence Conran has sent a notable figure from the world of design on a 30,000 pound ($54,000) shopping spree, in search of "things you'd like to live with" as part of the Conran Foundation Collection. When the popular 33-year-old English designer, sculptor and architect Thomas Heatherwick got the call this year, he decided to put a little extra legwork into the assignment.
"I wanted to see how many ideas 30,000 pounds could buy," Heatherwick said on a recent afternoon in the Design Museum cafe on the banks of the Thames, as the river sparkled blindingly outside the all-glass windows. "It turned into like kind of a TV challenge show."
Heatherwick hunted the street market stalls, websites, corner stores and catalogs of the world in search of nearly 1,000 objects, which are on show until Sunday at the Design Museum.
He lugged back booty in his carry-on from detours during business trips to Japan, China and Istanbul. And he turned every social encounter during the space of 18 months into an opportunity to solicit suggestions -- receiving hundreds of leads and submissions in the process.
Heatherwick says he set out to collect innovative and ingenious objects that normally wouldn't have made it past the taste police in a temple devoted to design.
Upstairs on a recent afternoon, people strolled past aisles of individually lighted boxes containing such items as a life-size glass "wine rifle" and a "rum sword" loaded with their namesakes. Christian chewing gum with a prayer on every wrapper. Edible peanut-shaped packing material. A urinal with a sink where the water tank usually is. A biodegradable papier mache coffin. Japanese eyelid glue. Oven mitts for Kosher Jews. A compass for pointing praying Muslims toward Mecca. Yorkshire tea made for London hard water. An organ donor T-shirt.
Each object is identified, along with its price and the location it was bought, and accompanied by clever captions that read like scribbles in a notebook, snippets of conversation or brilliant short-story titles.
Next to a tub of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" the caption reads "I Can't Believe They Called it This." Then there's Iranian cola in a package with Coca-Cola colors whose bottle bears the English-language words "liberate your taste" ("Anti-American cola brand."). Anti-smoking labels for cigarette packs ("Tobacco brand image mired by message of doom."). A plaster-of-Paris kit allowing men to cast models of their privates ("Somebody thought of this!"). Taxi-shaped taxi cab receipts ("Receipt in shape of service provided."). A miniature three-way mirror found in a pet shop in Berlin ("Vanity mirror for budgie who needs own reflection for company.")
