When toasters could fly: a museum for domestic appliances

They come from flea markets across Europe and the United States, from Internet auctions or dusty lofts: the vacuum cleaners and hot irons, toasters and pots and pans from the avant-garde of modern design, which French collector Jean-Bernard Hebey has picked up over decades.
Around 375 of these extraordinary domestic appliances from the 1920s to the 1970s are on display at the design museum in the Flanders' metropolis of Ghent, northern Belgium, in an exhibition entitled Domestic Aesthetics open to the public until September 30.

The first item Hebey bought was a lemon squeezer in the United States when he was 16. Now his Paris collection has some 8,000 items and is likely the largest European collection of designer domestic appliances.

"America was colored; Europe was still black and white," says Hebey. This is how his passion for collecting originated in the 1950s.

In fact, objects like the bright-red ice-crusher The Ice Gun from 1940, which strongly resembles a futuristic space patrol pistol, would have been unimaginable in Old Europe at the time.

Some of his toasters look as if they could fly, and his vacuum cleaners resemble rockets on vats that are more likely to do their service in orbit.

"Over the last 50 years modernity has always been associated with space travel or aviation," Hebey said. Domestic design had to "fulfill necessities and dreams at the same time."

passion:It means you love something very much.
loft:It means the top floor of a house.
metropolis:It means the city located at center of a country , or the main city.


I like to collect any interesting , special thing . I collect stamps , pens , toys , books , and beautiful paper , I also want to collect some appliances which be used in the kitchen , but most of them are too expensive . This article gives me an inmagination to future , if those things really can fly , it may be very interesting .