If you’ve ever had entire sink full of dishes, you know what a bother it is to maneuver your faucet around so that you have a suitable amount of space to apply hot soapy water. The horizontal nature of most faucets movement doesn’t allow for much latitude in terms of cleaning up. Thankfully, the folks at Kohler, one of the global leaders in kitchen and bath design and technology, have made fitting your dishes under the faucet a problem of the past. Their latest faucet design, the Kohler Karbon Kitchen faucet, was inspired by the design of both lighting and construction equipment possessing articulating joints and combines ‘functionality and performance of a pull down faucet, while also allowing the user to position and leave the sprayhead right where it’s needed,’ making all of your time spent applying elbow grease to your fine china a heck of a lot easier. While this particular faucet seems extremely practical, it’s also pretty easy on the eyes. It’s a truly unique piece of design work — and that works as well as it looks.

The work of Austrian designers Bernhard Bucheggar, Michael Denoth and Thomas Feichtner is incredibly intriguing. Dark and angular, yet warm and mysterious, and very James Bond, the group say they practice a counter strategy to an economically motivated concept of design and instead, they search for a strategy apart of globalization and mass production. According to them, the future of product design lies in having a regional and cultural reference, fabricated by way of small-scale manufacturers. BD and F declare in their mission statement definition of “industrial design” as being obsolete and predict a movement back to “manufactories…” Either way, I’m a big fan of their solid silver CUTT cutlery, BRIC drinking glass and titanium timepiece, coincidentally titled WATCH.

Trivets are important. Not as important as, say, a workable plan for Palestinian statehood, but can lasting peace in the Middle East prevent our nice wooden table from scorch marks? Swedish home accessory masters Hetta offer two bendable cork pot rests (in a ladder or chain style) that can hold several hot vessels at once. And, because they’re made of cork, they’re biodegradable, should you ever decide to throw them out. What does all of this mean? Szechuan hot pot party at your place!

Via Treehugger

With its surreal moments, life can become quite cinematic at times, and depending on which side of the bed you wake up on and which happenstance you find yourself in as the day goes on, you could draw a parallel between your reality and an animated cartoon. Not that I experience a 2-D world often (well, not until I put my contact lenses in, anyway). But maybe it would actually be a lot more fun than you’d expected if you got to live in a cartoon sometimes, and this was an idea that became suddenly so appealing to me when I saw Alessi’s OrienTales collection (no permalink; click on “Spring/Summer 2008″). The Italian household goods company recruited design superman Stefano Giovannoni to combine heads with the National Palace Museum of Taiwan last year, and this playful set of goods is the new second series to come out of the coupling. Referencing Asian 18th-century ceramic containers, the products in the line are practical for the kitchen, from the Paradise Birds salt and pepper shakers to the Banana Boy sugar bowl, and each is partly hand-painted and made in bone china and bakelite. A book, Orientales: Eastern Stories Through Western Eyes, was released to delve into the details of this particular collection. If you didn’t look at them close enough, you could be convinced the OrienTales characters were taken straight out of a “Pukka” cartoon, all the more warranting of the need to make sure your 20/20 vision’s alright in the morning when you’re setting up breakfast.

If you're like us, you fancy yourself quite the kitchen magician. Even if your chef-ly creations aren't exactly culinary innovations, there's no reason your cooking tools can't be cutting edge. Thanks to NYC based product development studio Pollen Design's collaboration with Swiss Kitchenware manufacturer Dalla Piazza, now even your measuring cups can be mesmerizing. The two companies are responsible for NuScup, an ingenious adaptable measuring scoop which uses the process of co-molding, a process where two parts are molded together to in order to create a bond between them (sort of like best friends), to facilitate the measurement of both dry and liquid ingredients. In layman's terms, it's conveniently designed and it looks pretty sweet too.

Keeping tea warm is probably one of my biggest battles during winter, besides avoiding the flu. Oftentimes, when I’m ready for a refill, I come back to the stove only to find the water I boiled had turned tepid. Multiply that extra electricity usage going to reheat water in every household in the same routine and you get a helluva lot of moving electrons, all adding up in wasted electricity.

But with Kenwood’s new and sleek Response kettle, color is used as the visual gauge to keep you tuned into how hot the water is within, inherently making it energy efficient. So if you have it, say, at the communal kitchen in the office, you’ll be able to tell right away whether the water’s at the ideal temp or not — saving you from either burning off your taste buds for a day or sticking your mug into the microwave. The kettle also has a cruise control-style option, in which it’ll maintain a certain temp to avoid the on-again-off-again game we do with our appliances sometimes.

It’s showcased on the UK Kenwood site, but here’s hoping they’ll offer this stateside soon.

My friend in San Diego is a big-time chef, and she spends a lot of money — a tonne of money — on expensive kitchen equipment because well, she can and she needs to. A while back, she went out and bought a vacuum sealer to aid in her obsession with sous-vide, and if I recall, she spent a considerable amount of money on it. Imagine my smugness, then, when I sent her the link that popped up in our Showcase this week for a small, affordable vacuum sealer that is seemingly perfect (not to mention, considerably smaller than what she purchased) for her little kitchen idée fixe. When my Frisper Freshkeeper turns up in the mail next week, I’ll have one less reason to feel inadequate next to her…and one more reason to feel superior next to my culinarily-challenged dinner guests. So go ahead and feed my ego; submit stuff that’ll make me (and everyone else) feel better about ourselves at our Showcase right now.

Porsche Design is certainly tapped into “what men want,” and its new collaboration with luxury kitchen designer Poggenpohl is a reminder that men like to spend time in the kitchen too (and what guy wouldn’t want to spend time in a kitchen like this?). The design is abundant with sleek and functional aluminum profiles and frames, glass, integrated lighting, and comes with your choice of driftwood or dark oak fronts to set off the other, more technical and steely materials. All of the doors incorporate innovative mechanisms that dispense with the need for handles — no more inadvertently tearing your drawers off while going for a midnight snack. And what would a “man’s” kitchen be without high tech audio-video integration that will stand up to that chicken wing sauce that you splash while hurrying back to the couch for the last play of the game? Look for this new (and tailored) kitchen concept at Poggenpohl studios around the world in spring 2008 and in the U.S. at the end of next summer; girlfriends and wives: fine…you can come too.

Loving this new cutlery set by my uber-design pal Jens Marin Skibsted (Biomega, Skibsted Ideation, et al). The design idea was to incorporate a chopstick rest (Hashi Oki) into some dead-sexy Scandinavian design cutlery. Methinks it worked; the whole integration gives the cutlery the ability to stand on its own without touching a potentially dirty surface. They were manufactured by Mater Design and produced in a family-owned factory located in the Guangdong province of Southern China. No word on pricing and availability, but sign me up — these look fantastic.

Not everyone can be Bobby Flay with a fish fillet. In the case that your culinary creations aren’t exactly works of art, shopmodi has come up with several other ways to turn your dining room table into an art gallery. The shopmodi eat collection features products from artists around the world and offers up cleverly designed, surprisingly practical kitchen staples such as napkin holders, salt and pepper shakers, and oil and vinegar dispensers that owe more to Picasso than Pyrex. Now, when you have friends over for dinner, you can hint at the “suggested admission fee” as they dine at the Guggenheim.

The quirky Danish design group Normann Copenhagen is at again. In this range of products, entiteld Form, they brought in the African/Swiss designer Charles Job. He makes egg timers (left), egg slicers (right), and salt and pepper shakers (not shown) look like works of art. All inspired by the shadows on a photograph. Really stellar and intelligently designed daily objects.

It’s funny, because unlike most of the things I’m led to write about, the subject of this post has been snaking its way into an increasing number of my girl-to-girl conversations. Maybe it’s because the subject in question could be described as “inventive”; maybe it’s just because it involves chocolate… but either way, The Baker’s Edge brownie pan has been making the rounds.

What the Baker’s Edge pan promises to do is create “two delicious, chewy edges” on each individual serving of brownie. My first response after reading that was well, I’m more of a gooey middles girl myself, and got ready to write the whole thing off..but then I recalled a few experiences I’ve had involving really, really tasty brownies, and how brownies of that caliber do, in fact, have delicious, scrumptious, delectably chewy edges. And after that, I started drooling. A lot, actually. So, aside from the fact that it probably takes a chef of some skill to get those perfect peripheries, I now am a fan of the Baker’s Edge brownie pan. That same fact sort of cuts me out of the type of person that’s qualified to grab one — but because our readers are in all other aspects brilliant, I see no reason why their genius should not extend to the kitchen…and then to the post office, where you can mail me some, for a very reasonable price.

Peter D’Alessandro’s Waste and Want cutting board has little detachable trays on its ends, one tray for waste and the other for the good bits you want in your food. Everybody can identify with the frustrations of regular cutting boards; they’re too small for you to cut up all the ingredients at once so you have to do a lot of ingredient transfer. When those transfers take place, things tend to fall on the ground and you almost certainly get your hands dirty. The Waste and Want board pretty much eliminates those difficulties by providing non-messy, spill-proof containers in which to carry your culinary cargo either to the bin or the pot. Actually, it looks like Mr. D’Alessandro has made something of a career out of finding clever ways to do commonplace kitchen tasks — check out his website to see his other gadgets, including a spoon, which boils its own water.

Our refrigerator door is littered with so much roommate correspondence, that even with the addition of some colorful fridge magnets for the local pizza delivery and favorite manicure/pedicure place, it’s not exactly an appetizing scene that confronts one on their search for sustenance. But if we had the Aquarela Refrigerator, a trip to the kitchen would be an event I could actually look forward to (I associate the kitchen with cooking — one of my strongest phobias). The fridge’s door and sides are made to emulate a dry erase board, which allows you to draw, erase and draw again to your creative side’s content with the included purple and red markers. This turns the fridge door into an ever-changing canvas, making it especially practical when bills and messages for absentee roommates come around. Currently this fridge is only available in Brazil, but since it has such a worldwide appeal, the idea should catch on soon elsewhere. Happy drawing!

Finding the balance between mass-production while maintaining a handmade aesthetic may be a struggle for many designers, but MUD Australia seem to manage it effortlessly. Founded in 1994 by Shelly Simpson, the line is completely microwave, food and dishwasher safe, and is designed primarily with minimalist principles and spatial conservation in mind. Chances are if you read home and interior magazines, you’ve seen their beautiful range of tabletop ceramics gracing many pages. After all, if you’re going to spend the time cooking — or pouring cereal out of the box and into a bowl — you might as well do it into something truly beautiful.