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Quirky's UnHampered: Imitation is the sincerest form of laundry

By Rain Noe - November 3, 2010

in Object Culture

One of the latest Quirky designs to reach production is the UnHampered folding laundry basket, a neatly-folding object that tucks away when not in use. Unfortunately the Quirky site doesn't credit the original designer, though we gather her first name is Barbara.

Made from plastic and featuring living hinges, as you can see in the following vid the UnHampered draws more than a little inspiration from another uncredited source, Joseph Joseph's folding colander:

Question for you all: If you're the Joseph Joseph designer behind the colander and you see this, are you bummed out or excited?

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Sven-Olof Andersson

8 years ago

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Is it possible to by this anywhere ?

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Laura

14 years ago

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the folding colander is by Adrien Wright.

www.designwright.co.uk.

I think there is a patent on the particular corner detail.
However the idea of using living hinges in polypropylene is hardly new or protectable, its been around for ages, and is more a material property than a "design" per se. It happens because the long polymer chains in PP align when stress is applied to them, making the material actually become stronger where it has been folded. A great design which makes use of this principle is the "folding chopping board" by Mark Sanders, which has been in the MoMA collection since the eighties.

www.mas-design.com/chopping_board.html.

It has recently come back into production with joseph and Joseph, too.

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Bob Johnson

14 years ago

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Elijah... have you put a patent on the wheels? If not then it's 100% fair game for someone to replicate those wheels 100% and patent them for themselves. FYI
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grimble

14 years ago

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I think this is a pretty nice concept executed well, though I'd like to see the folding in person- that kind of collapsing works well in paper and cardstock but is difficult to translate into a thick sheet material. I hope it works well.

Elijah, I don't think they've ripped off your wheels, in fact I think your wheels look off the shelf- that wheel design is fairly generic. I was expecting to see something quite different when I visited your site.

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Rob Podell

14 years ago

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There was an entry for the housewares competition a few years ago... 2005? For a folding laundry basket. It is stored in MIAD's library of housewares competition entries. I know because I scanned it into digital format.
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travisimo

14 years ago

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love it
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