Get A Grip 🔪
The industrial designer who invented an iconic knife handle didn’t start with kitchen utensils.
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When I say the phrase “industrial design,” what comes to mind?
Perhaps you think of the rounded edges of the 1998 Bondi Blue iMac, or the work of Dieter Bohn.
That said, one of the most important efforts to merge industrial design with every day objects shows itself thanks to the kitchen knife—though it didn’t necessarily start there.
And it is all thanks to a man who, well into middle age, unexpectedly found himself moving from the illustration of children’s books to the work of improving a basic industrial design.
Thomas Lamb found himself rethinking his entire career amid the Second World War, a war effort he supported, and found himself inspired by the needs of disabled veterans. The problem? The crutches and canes simply weren’t good enough, and ended up hurting these war heroes more than helping.
So Lamb, sensing an opportunity to improve this state of affairs, analyzed the way that the human hand and body gripped things, which eventually led him to file for a number of patents.
“It is an object of the invention to provide a handle so designed with relation to the average human hand and arm as to provide comfortable, natural gripping surfaces which tend to distribute and equalize gripping tensions and thereby relieve strain and reduce fatigue in use,” he said in his 1944 patent filing for a handle.
(He also greatly improved the design of the arm rest commonly used in crutches, using the same mindset.)
So, where do kitchen knives come into play? Well, starting in the 1950s, he began expanding his market for his work in grips to other industries, coming up with a cutlery handle in the 1950s. He then licensed the ergonomic knife design to a firm called Alcas, which then started selling the Cutco line of knives in 1952.
Yes, that means, despite the fairly noble starting point from which he got going, we have this guy to indirectly blame for 70 years of door-to-door knife sales.
» Wanna learn more? We have a whole piece on steak knives from 2017, titled “Never A Dull Moment.”