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Unconsciously satisfying

David Mellor - Pride - flatware

Great design hits you on many lev­els. Design­ers love to talk about clos­ing the door of a BMW. It feels dif­fer­ent. And this feel­ing may not even reg­is­ter in the con­scious mind, but it mat­ters. The feel­ing of solid­i­ty and integri­ty dur­ing that action is unique and last­ing, even though it occu­pies a tiny sliv­er around the expe­ri­ence of dri­ving. You may not con­scious­ly notice it, but your mind reg­is­ters it and you body remem­bers it.I hes­i­tate to admit this in a pub­lic forum, but I don't think I've ever pur­chased a new piece of sil­ver­ware. Our sil­ver­ware draw­er is a hodge­podge of air­line spoons, thrift store forks, garage sale knives, odds and ends of var­i­ous shapes and sizes. But you've got to won­der whether the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing wouldn't be great­ly enhanced — even uncon­scious­ly — by great sil­ver­ware, like the set above by crafts­man David Mel­lor. I saw it yes­ter­day at Heath Ceram­ics in Sausal­i­to, and even a philis­tine like me could tell that it's got some­thing going on. For $160, you can find out for your­self.If you do, lis­ten to your sub­con­scious, and let me know what it says.