![]() ![]() ![]() Released onto the international market in 1961 the Kikkoman soy sauce dispenser became a symbol of new contemporary Japanese design. The spout design made the last drop flow back into the bottle rather than dripping onto the table. ![]() After 100 prototypes Ekuan realized that the best solution was an upward facing spout. It had to be easy to pour but yet spill-proof. This part of the project ended up taking 3 years. The bigger problem was how to make the cap. Kenji Ekuan chose to make a glass bottle so you would know exactly when to refill it, and when you did you wouldn’t spill thanks to its wide mouth. Due to the particularly high viscosity of soy sauce it, more often than not, dripped along the side of the dispenser leaving a stain on the table. Up til then soy sauce was bought in big glass bottles and poured into small ceramic dispensers. One of his early assignments came from Kikkoman who wanted him to create a soy sauce dispenser. In 1952, soon after graduating from the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, Mr Ekuan founded his design studio G.K. “Right then, I decided to be a maker of things.” He continued “I needed something to touch, to look at”. In a later interview he told the New York Times “Faced with that nothingness, I felt a great nostalgia for human culture”. Instead of following his father’s footsteps he decided he wanted to take part in reshaping post-war Japan through design. This tragedy lead him to rethink his career. He lost his sister in the blast and his father became Ill with radiation sickness and died a year later. At 16 Ekuan was just released from naval academy when the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and he witnessed the devastation from the train taking him back home. At the end of the war his family moved to Hiroshima where his father worked as a Buddhist priest. Kenji Ekuan was born in Tokyo but spent his early years in Hawaii. In a way the history of the Kikkoman Soy Sauce dispenser, designed in 1961, started at the end of WWII. In fact, he actually made the initial model just as you would a classic sculpture by adding and filing of material from the plaster model. Using the latest in materials and production technology he was able to create the remarkably organic shape of his sculptural Egg, intending to lend the visitors a calm space where the chair was placed in the bustling hotel lobby. In keeping with the design trends of the day, Arne Jacobsen was inspired by organic shapes the same way Eero Saarinen and Charles & Ray Eames were. From the structure to the furniture and down to details like door handles. Just like Gio Ponti in Italy, Arne Jacobsen preferred to design all aspects of a project himself. Not only did he create the Egg, he also designed the Swan chair and the Drop chair as well as a wide range of other custom furniture, glass wear, textiles, cutlery and more, specifically for the hotel. In the end, the most remarkable result of the project wasn’t the building itself but rather the furniture that Arne Jacobsen designed for the hotel. Here SAS passengers could check in their luggage and wait in the stylishly furnished lounge for the SAS airport shuttle to whisk them away to their flights. Regardless of the fact that the building was situated in the center of Copenhagen, 14 kilometers from the airport, it was also an airport terminal. The 22 story tower contains 275 hotel rooms and the lower horizontal building held the hotel foyer, a restaurant and a conservatory. The building was designed with two separate sections with different functions. It was Copenhagen’s first skyscraper and it is considered to be Arne Jacobsen’s principal work of architecture. When the SAS Royal Hotel in the Danish capital was finished in 1960, it was a marvel. ![]()
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