Eureka!

When I read this post on the Gizmodo blog it was as if a curtain had been drawn open. No wonder I am a Mac fan-boy (waiting for tomorrow's news with admirable patience), tending to go ooh and aah whenever there's a new design by Jonathan Ive. No wonder at all, since way back in the sixties I was a Braun fan-boy, and a huge admirer of all the work of Dieter Rams.

Rams was introduced to me by my father; in the mid-fifties his most treasured posession was what was then called a radiogram. This model was nicknamed 'Snow White's coffin'. Whenever I hear the Modern Jazz Quartet I see this lovely piece of kit in my mind's eye.

One of my own very first Dieter Rams acquisitions was the cigarette lighter shown at the left. This must have been in the early sixties and, although the design was modified in the seventies, this is the one I'd snap up if it was ever offered on eBay.

Now I come to think of it, did my long-lasting preference for a colour palette featuring orange and grey have Braun as its triggering influence?



And, since migrating from Nesacfé to proper filtered coffee, I have never been without a Braun coffeee maker. Unfortunately my budget never stretched to the armchair shown below in which I would happily have sunk, resting after sessions using Mac gear designed by Ives, in the spirit of Rams...



...and listening to John Lewis' syncopated riffs when he solos on No Sun In Venice.