The Thousands

Have you ever spent forever looking for something – the perfect image in your head? You’re damn sure it exists but, for the life of you, you can’t find it. Often the object is simple, stereotypical even, but your search is always fruitless.

Sori Yanagi‘s kettle is one of those things. The perfect example of an object that – if you don’t remember where you saw it or who it was made by – will be lost to you forever. The perfect blend of familiarity and originality, the kind of thing lesser men might claim is easy to create. Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa call it Super Normal; they are so ‘normal’ they cease to be normal anymore.

The easy part is as follows: Sori Yanagi is his name (chair aficionados will know his butterfly stool) and CIBI is exhibiting some amazing examples of his reserved, Japanese, ‘Super Normal’ design from this Thursday. The kettles (in both mirror-finish and matte) are so perfectly ubiquitous you’ve probably never noticed them before – but now they’re all you’ll think of.