Re: The Chemex coffee urn
Do you ever notice that sometimes you have a recurring motif running through your daily life for a short period? It's usually something banal yet unusual enough to catch your notice, like a Barbra Strisand song or a picture of a European star athelete from the 60's.
For me, lately, it's been the Chemex coffee urn.
It's a finely crafted object invented 60 years ago by German chemist and member of the Bauhaus art movement, Dr. Peter Schlumbohm. A handblown double-cone, the top part open to accomodate a filter and coffee grounds, the bottom an enclosed vessel from which the freshly brewed coffee can be served. Around the middle is a carved wooden handle tied on with a leather thong.
To me, it's a very interesting design, as the shape of the urn suggests scientific equipment, like a beaker used in the big industrial labs of the Atomic Age, but the wood and leather has a beatnik/hippie "return to nature" bohemian mentality that was beginning to sneak into the suburbs. Pretty much the late 50's zeitgeist as personified in a small, seemingly insignificant household object.
Anyhow, I first saw one in a junk shop, er, vintage furniture store on Lower Telegraph in Berkeley about four years ago. I'd never seen one before, so I asked the owner about it. He didn't know anything about it, so I looked it up online: they're still being made, actually, and you can buy one online here.
I'd pretty much forgotten about them until I went to a Fourth of July party at some friends' apartment in the city. They had a vintage Chemex on a shelf over the fridge.
Because it's summer, I've been re-reading Ian Fleming's "From Russia with Love". I came across this passage: as Bond orders breakfast, he asks for "...two large cups of black coffee from De BR in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex (and no sugar)."
Hmm. Odd.
Then this morning, I was watching "Return to Peyton Place" on cable. Just as I tune in, I see Mary Astor setting the breakfast table with, you guessed it, a freshly-brewed pot of Chemex coffee.
In the words of Father Guido Sarducci, "Coinzidenza?"
11:08:00 AM 
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