Really interesting work from Sofian Tallal, an industrial designer in Amman Jordan. I love this Chiseled faucet!

The “Chiseled” concept is the first of a high-end bathroom/kitchen faucet range designed as if carved out of a block of chrome. The wide base, extended neck and rear-mounted handle provides a dynamic profile reinforcing the stealth-inspired sharp edges and flat facets.

The tools we use in our every day lives have come a long way since the time of early man. Jagged rocks fashioned into crude shapes and surfaces ideal for jabbing into fleshy substances just don’t seem like they would fly for kitchen knives nowadays. Or would they? Neolithic Knives, a new creation for Bond by NYC based designer Matthias Kaeding is a striking homage to the instruments of the new stone age made slightly more convenient for today’s kitchen commanders. These sleek ceramic instruments bring a more salt of the earth appeal to the acts of smashing, slicing, dicing, chopping, and scooping up ingredients in your meal preparation. While we’re not sure if it’s just as easy as whipping out the ginsu, it’ll probably give you enough of a sense of accomplishment once you’ve managed to mince an entire onion that you’ll have no choice to let out a hearty grunt reminiscent of your evolutionary ancestors.

Via designboom

In what reminds me of a cross between storage Tupperware and tiffin lunch carriers, updated to modern times, the Innate food containers are just what my pantry needs. They are BPA-Free and Phthalate-Free (try saying that 3 times quick), so you know that no nasty chemicals are leeching into your food even when heated. The containers are made of durable 18/8 steel while the tops are made of silicone. The best part is the top fully collapses to fit flat on the container, yet expands and doubles as a bowl. It is also microwave safe which is great since metal and microwaves don’t play nice. There are two sizes available with three color choices.

Creepy knife holder by designer Robert Knight.

Robert Knight describes this mesblock with “Love it or Hate it” that statement fits. Definitely nothing for the Hello Kitty fans. The Mesblock is a design piece by Robert Knight, a designer based out of the Netherlands. The Mesblock is limited to 10 pieces and is handmade by the designer. Via CLDFX

What happens when you cross a brass knuckle with a cork screw? This. Completely opposite, yet totally awesome together. Designed in limited edition of 50 by Jonathan Sabine and for sale at Ministry Of The Interior in Toronto. They’re not shipping them over the border for obvious reasons, sorry. It also comes in a dead-sexy (no pun intended) laser etched walnut box.

If you go bananas over Alessi’s newest launch in its whimsical OrienTales collection of kitchen doodads that we adore, Banana Family, we wouldn’t be surprised. The collabo between the Italian company’s Stefano Giovannoni and Takeda Rumiko with the National Palace Museum Taiwan monkeys around with animated primates dressed in bright uniforms, hanging out and disguising themselves as spice holders (pictured), napkin rings and corkscrews. I love the parrot sitting atop the monkey’s head in the Banana Babies place markers—as if inviting pals over for dinner already isn’t fun enough. Design Boom has some better photos of the products, while the Alessi site shows them in 2-D; as you can see, they remarkably resemble the real thing.

Iconic French product designer Philippe Starck has made a living adding a modern slant to everyday items from watches to wireless speakers. You could say he’s had a hand in innovating everything but the kitchen sink… until now. Continuing his lengthy relationship with German bathroom furniture manufacturer Duravit, Starck finally makes his arrival in the tastiest room in your home via his new Starck K kitchen sink collection. Combining sleekness with high functionality, his usual calling card, these centers for culinary cleansing that serve a much wider variety of purposes are as much a work of art as the meals you hope to create…unless you’re just microwaving hot pockets.

Via designboom

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a coffee fanatic. I’ve spent countless hours on the CoffeeGeek.com forums and invested in a bunch of home equipment, all with the goal of making the perfect cup of coffee. The more time you spend in the world of coffee, the more you realize that the perfect cup is an elusive thing. The beans, the water, the grind, the temperature, the machine, the pressure, the tamp … they all make a difference. I'd say my one greatest learning is that the true coffee fanatic is really seeking consistency which leads to good coffee.

When I was asked to test out a Nespresso machine I was inherently skeptical. All of the manual factors I just talked about disappeared and I was convinced that something so easy couldn't produce a cup of coffee worth drinking. I've had previous experiences with systems from Keurig, Flavia, and Senseo, all of which were fairly lackluster. Why should Nespresso be any different?

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A toothpick holder that becomes a spiny animal and salt and pepper shakers disguised as trees are just two of  the freshly released items in the second series of Alessi’s Orientales animated tableware collection. We first featured Giovannoni Stefano and Takeda Rumiko, the first of which we featured a few months ago. The aforementioned Forrest Gump set is probably the best of the new line, but a couple of the Sweet Fish castors would look great on any kitchen shelf too. I can’t wait to see what’s next so I can have an excuse to spend more time in the kitchen.

If you’ve ever had entire sink full of dishes, you know what a bother it is to maneuver your faucet around so that you have a suitable amount of space to apply hot soapy water. The horizontal nature of most faucets movement doesn’t allow for much latitude in terms of cleaning up. Thankfully, the folks at Kohler, one of the global leaders in kitchen and bath design and technology, have made fitting your dishes under the faucet a problem of the past. Their latest faucet design, the Kohler Karbon Kitchen faucet, was inspired by the design of both lighting and construction equipment possessing articulating joints and combines ‘functionality and performance of a pull down faucet, while also allowing the user to position and leave the sprayhead right where it’s needed,’ making all of your time spent applying elbow grease to your fine china a heck of a lot easier. While this particular faucet seems extremely practical, it’s also pretty easy on the eyes. It’s a truly unique piece of design work — and that works as well as it looks.

The work of Austrian designers Bernhard Bucheggar, Michael Denoth and Thomas Feichtner is incredibly intriguing. Dark and angular, yet warm and mysterious, and very James Bond, the group say they practice a counter strategy to an economically motivated concept of design and instead, they search for a strategy apart of globalization and mass production. According to them, the future of product design lies in having a regional and cultural reference, fabricated by way of small-scale manufacturers. BD and F declare in their mission statement definition of “industrial design” as being obsolete and predict a movement back to “manufactories…” Either way, I’m a big fan of their solid silver CUTT cutlery, BRIC drinking glass and titanium timepiece, coincidentally titled WATCH.

Trivets are important. Not as important as, say, a workable plan for Palestinian statehood, but can lasting peace in the Middle East prevent our nice wooden table from scorch marks? Swedish home accessory masters Hetta offer two bendable cork pot rests (in a ladder or chain style) that can hold several hot vessels at once. And, because they’re made of cork, they’re biodegradable, should you ever decide to throw them out. What does all of this mean? Szechuan hot pot party at your place!

Via Treehugger

With its surreal moments, life can become quite cinematic at times, and depending on which side of the bed you wake up on and which happenstance you find yourself in as the day goes on, you could draw a parallel between your reality and an animated cartoon. Not that I experience a 2-D world often (well, not until I put my contact lenses in, anyway). But maybe it would actually be a lot more fun than you’d expected if you got to live in a cartoon sometimes, and this was an idea that became suddenly so appealing to me when I saw Alessi’s OrienTales collection (no permalink; click on “Spring/Summer 2008″). The Italian household goods company recruited design superman Stefano Giovannoni to combine heads with the National Palace Museum of Taiwan last year, and this playful set of goods is the new second series to come out of the coupling. Referencing Asian 18th-century ceramic containers, the products in the line are practical for the kitchen, from the Paradise Birds salt and pepper shakers to the Banana Boy sugar bowl, and each is partly hand-painted and made in bone china and bakelite. A book, Orientales: Eastern Stories Through Western Eyes, was released to delve into the details of this particular collection. If you didn’t look at them close enough, you could be convinced the OrienTales characters were taken straight out of a “Pukka” cartoon, all the more warranting of the need to make sure your 20/20 vision’s alright in the morning when you’re setting up breakfast.

If you're like us, you fancy yourself quite the kitchen magician. Even if your chef-ly creations aren't exactly culinary innovations, there's no reason your cooking tools can't be cutting edge. Thanks to NYC based product development studio Pollen Design's collaboration with Swiss Kitchenware manufacturer Dalla Piazza, now even your measuring cups can be mesmerizing. The two companies are responsible for NuScup, an ingenious adaptable measuring scoop which uses the process of co-molding, a process where two parts are molded together to in order to create a bond between them (sort of like best friends), to facilitate the measurement of both dry and liquid ingredients. In layman's terms, it's conveniently designed and it looks pretty sweet too.

Keeping tea warm is probably one of my biggest battles during winter, besides avoiding the flu. Oftentimes, when I’m ready for a refill, I come back to the stove only to find the water I boiled had turned tepid. Multiply that extra electricity usage going to reheat water in every household in the same routine and you get a helluva lot of moving electrons, all adding up in wasted electricity.

But with Kenwood’s new and sleek Response kettle, color is used as the visual gauge to keep you tuned into how hot the water is within, inherently making it energy efficient. So if you have it, say, at the communal kitchen in the office, you’ll be able to tell right away whether the water’s at the ideal temp or not — saving you from either burning off your taste buds for a day or sticking your mug into the microwave. The kettle also has a cruise control-style option, in which it’ll maintain a certain temp to avoid the on-again-off-again game we do with our appliances sometimes.

It’s showcased on the UK Kenwood site, but here’s hoping they’ll offer this stateside soon.