Stories — Things

Hand Made in 77 Steps. Built to Last. 

You’ve likely seen versions or depictions of this iconic chair on many occasions, and in a variety of places: homes, offices, restaurants, hotels; maybe even prisons and submarines. The chair features regularly in design magazines and movies, such as The Matrix, The Dark Knight, Law & Order and CSI.

It’s called the 1006 (pronounced ten-oh-six) “Navy” chair, and it’s made in Hanover, Pennsylvania, by Emeco, a company that was created in 1944 just to make that specific chair. The back story is a good one.

Design Classic with Unique Movement

The official Swiss railway clock, also known as the "SBB clock," is a clock design that was created for use in railway stations in Switzerland by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in 1944. The clock has become a cultural icon in Switzerland and is considered a global design classic. The movement of its hands is unique.

The gambling game that’s not gambling

Gambling for money is, for the most part, banned in Japan. But some sneaky punters found a way around the stringent laws in the form of pachinko: a very noisy, very colourful, and very addictive pinball-cross-pokies arcade game that’s wildly popular throughout Japan. As you will discover if you read the post, the work around is convoluted; but the system works. In 2021, the pachinko market amounted to a whopping 14.6 trillion Japanese Yen (approximately 157 billion AUD), representing almost 4% of the country’s GDP. 

The Shape that Shouldn’t Exist

Have you ever wondered how a dome-shelled tortoise turns itself back the right way up when placed upside down (a survival reflex known as “self-righting”)? It’s because its shell resembles a Gömböc (pronounced goemboets), the first-known three-dimensional homogenous object that has just one stable point and one unstable point of equilibrium when placed on a flat surface.

Iconic South East Asian Utility Cloth

Good Morning towels have a long history in South East Asia. The perfect functional and aesthetic balance of a quality “GMT" (the affectionate acronym) is hard to beat. The material absorbs well, it isn't too thick, and the size is just sufficient that one could use it to dry off after bathing.