The Kilner Jar

The Kilner jar is an example of classic, iconic design that worked and remains in production because it works. It is everywhere, yet most won’t know what it is called.

The Kilner Jar

It’s all about the way the lid seals to make an airtight container.

John Kilner and Company of Yorkshire made the original screwtop verison of the jar in 1837. After a couple of years, they moved from Castleford to Wakefield and rebranded as John Kilner and Sons (John and Caleb, George and William). George and William took over, then, as Kilner Brothers Glass and later as Kilner Bros, they introduced the patented wire seal shown above in 1900, and also obtained the patent for the Mason Jar.

Ravenhead Glass, Cannington, Shaw & Co, Nuttall Co, Alfred Alexander & Co and Robert Candlish & Son combined in 1913 as a public company named The United Glass Bottle Manufacturers Ltd.

So when Kilner went bankrupt in 1937 all the patents were bought by The United Glass Bottle Manufacturers Ltd ensuring the Kilner Jar’s continuation.

Today the brand is offered by The Rayware Group of Liverpool – you can visit their site here, they also offer other historic, iconic British brands.

North Mountain Amber Ale Bottle Top

Grolsch Lager Bottle Top

The wired lid from the 1900s has been adapted – along with the rubber gasket ring for bottles – particularly for beers.

There was even a fashion trend in the 1980s where school children removed Grolsch bottle tops from the glass bottle, and affixed them to their shoes through their shoelaces. The tops made a noise when walking. Schools banned this, of course, not merely because of the noise, but also because it promoted alcohol drinking in minors. Nevertheless, it reinforces how iconic this Kilner closure is, it is a design and cultural icon from Victorian Britain right through to today.

Grolsch Bottle Tops on Shoes in the 1980s

From Kindergarten to Modern Architecture

Most people today accept that childhood is a big influence on adulthood, so it should come as a surprise that the “inventor” of structured childhood is all but forgotten.

The man in question is Friedrich Fröbel. He was a school teacher, and developed the Kindergarten – he founded his Play and Activity Institute in 1837 and coined the term “kindergarten” three years later.

Fröbel designed his own educational play materials called Fröbelgaben (which are known in English as Fröebel Gifts), which included geometric building blocks and pattern activity blocks. Understanding the importance of activity of the child in learning, he came up with the concept of Freiarbeit (in English, free work) establishing the educational aspect of games, and how the game is the form that life takes in childhood. Activities in the first kindergarten included singing, dancing, gardening, and self-directed play with the Fröebel Gifts. All of which may appear unexciting today, but at the time – this was a revolution.

Fröbel died in 1852 knowing his work was being trashed by his government, which banned kindergartens in 1851. What Fröbel would never know is that this ban resulted in a great many German teachers fleeing to other countries, and taking with them Fröbel’s kindergarten.

Fröebel College is now a constituent college of Roehampton University and is home to the university’s department of education. Fröbel’s ideas are now worldwide, and well established.

Fröbel influenced beyond education, naturally influencing children who would become adults in time. His building forms and movement games are accepted forerunners of what has become known as abstract art.

He is cited as a major influence in the Bauhaus movement, where Walter Gropius designed the Friedrich Fröbel Haus in his honour.

Famously, many children who grew up in kindergartens and with Fröbel’s ideas about geometry, became famous modernist architects such as Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright, and even Le Corbusier.

It would be difficult to find a more influential person on Western Civilisation than Friedrich Fröbel – we all live in a world of kindergartens, of modern buildings, of thinking about learning and teaching methods to make people and the built environment better. Friedrich Fröbel ought to be recognised more as the cause of all this, don’t you think?

The Inventor of Fast Food

Momofuku Ando was a remarkable man who changed the world.

Aged 48, he invented and manufactured ramen noodles – the world’s first fast food to help solve the food shortage crisis in post war Japan. And he wasn’t finished yet! He was an inveterate entrepreneur and a design genius.

His journey wasn’t easy, but he persevered. Originally from Taiwan, at just 22 he began with opening a textiles company with a small inheritance. Then he moved to Japan to go to university and started a sideline clothing business, when World War II happened. He retained his Taiwan nationality but stayed in Japan after the war. In trying to grow his business, he employed students under “training scholarships” – but he was caught, arrested and jailed for two years for tax evasion. Once free he started a small family business making salt, he called it Nissin, and it grew into a successful global business going strong still.

Japan was suffering a major food shortage problem, so he set up a laboratory in his work shed and through flash frying experimantation, discovered how to make instant noodles. He’d noticed that oil was removing water from tempura when frying, and found that noodles could be dried using that principle and then boiled in water to remoisturise them back into soft, edible noodles.

Now aged 48, with the 1960s starting, he manufactured Chikin Ramen, and it was a hit, expensive at the start, but over time with more sales, the noodles became very affordable, soon making it one of the most eaten foods in the country.

Ando founded the Instant Food Industry Association and started putting on the packaging the “fill to” line and the date of manufacture, among other food and consumer innovations.

When he was 61, he invented Cup O’ Noodles for the 70’s US market; he’d noticed that the Americans took his Ramen noodles, put them in a mug and ate with a fork.

He changed the world; Pot Noodles, Cup Noodles and Ramen are cheap and plentiful – it’s big business, selling 98 billion servings in 2009 alone!

Of course, Momofuku Ando was awarded all sorts of medals, and honorary titles. He took the risks and it paid off. His original thought was merely to help relieve the post-war food shortage in Japan – which he certainly did, but his experimentation created an entire industry. Without Ando, we would not have instant noodles, and the impact on food, on food production and even the essential notion of “fast food” was born because of him – and expectation of quick hot food became the norm. Today we take fast food for granted.

The design elements – especially the cup noodle – are unnoticed today as they are so ubiquitous – but in 1971, it was a revolution in food packaging. That you poured hot water and waited for a few minutes was exceptional – so easy, so convenient, and so cheap. Space age stuff. He had to design many features – from the dehydrated flavourings to the lid. Cup Noodles came with shorter length noodles and a disposable fork! It is a rare skill to be able to see past your own culture of chopsticks and bowls. He found a way to sell an inherently Japanese food to Americans by understanding what Americans want, and how they eat.

What began as a garden shed solution to a food shortage, morphed into the contemporary Japanese idea of a better life through convenience – and after that into the Japanese obsession with breaking into the US markets with consumer products that Americans didn’t even know they wanted – from the Walkman to instant noodles.

He died aged 96 at the start of 2007, and he claimed that his health and longevity was due to eating his own noodles every day.

Foster

I am going to argue here that Sir Norman Foster is the number one architect in the world today, with an unprecedented track record of instantly recognisable buildings that enrich and excite and basically go against the grain of the present architectural and planning trends.

It all started when, in the mid-1980s, Norman Foster became famous.

The Bicycle

The bicycle has been around for a long time and has a well documented history easily found elsewhere. The bicycle is a classic design in that once it settled down into it’s essential form factor, changes have not altered it’s recognition as a bicycle. It has essentially remained unchanged — and this seems to be true for the future of the device: despite new innovations, such as automatic transmissions, new materials, and new types of uses — such as off-road mountain biking, and BMX.

What Is Wrong With Car Design?

CARS were originally “horseless carriages”, and so the coachwork design was naturally based on horse-drawn carriages. Then came aerodynamic and futuristic, with space-age fins and lots of chrome. You would be forgiven for thinking that we have seen it all from sports-cars to people carriers, from smart-cars to stretch limousines.

However, the sad fact is that each wave of automotive design has completely overlooked the user. Incredible as it may seem, this is patently true!

Barbed Wire

Barbed Wire changed the world — forever. It’s commonplace to the point of virtual invisibility to all but criminals – yet who gives it a thought? Oddly enough, it has not been around for all that long, under 150 years in fact, but is truly a classic design, and the fascinating story reflects changes in society of all kinds.

Sholes’s Keyboard

Writing and drawing by hand have been around as long as we have, but surprisingly, mechanical reproduction has been around almost as long — think of stamped coins, woodcut pictures, engravings and even signet rings stamping wax seals.

Wheelchair

The original wheelchair for the disabled was invented in 1783 by John Dawson “Wheelchair maker” of Bath — hence the name “Bath chair”. It had three wheels, the small front one being used for steering. It was a very good design for the era.

The A-Z

‘From Aaron Hill to Zoffany St’ — An article by Claire Heald of BBC News:

No one thinks twice today about reaching for a map to navigate their way around a town or city — but do they stop to consider how the street atlas came to be?