You know how to use chopsticks, right? (Yes, of course, you answer.) Including the disposable ones? (Why, is there a difference, you ask). Think again. The internet has been stumbling over itself in shock by one Twitter user’s realisation that the top might actually be used as a chopstick rest. (Her post got so much attention that she's since switched her account to private – apparently a few hundred thousand shares proved to be a bit too intense.) Break off the wide, flattened bit and proceed to place it on your eating surface as a hashioki, rather than breaking the chopsticks apart from there. It sounds ingenious, and many were perplexed – is this really what that bit was originally designed for? Have we been fools for all these years, or even decades?
Turns out, we haven’t. The chopsticks shown above are actually a prototype conjured up by a Hong Kong-based designer team known as Orange Terry, the brainchild of Terry Law and Minnie Kong. They have dubbed the recent Twitter craze a 'beautiful mistake', and told us they would like to set the record straight. The design was a submission for the MUJI Award competition in 2014, which centred around the theme of 'Long Lasting Design for Living'. Inspiration came from the simple Japanese toothpick design: here, the top end can be broken off to create a small rest, so that the (used) toothpick won’t have to touch the surface, thereby encouraging you to use it again – or just to indicate that it’s been used, apparently. (No, we did not know this either. This might just be the real mind = blown.)
@bortofdarkness @Jmcobern1 expectations vs reality pic.twitter.com/4q7mDw4kbW
— Huey (@huey90) 9 februari 2016
– Images courtesy of Orange Terry