What holds last night’s spaghetti, won’t break if a truck runs over it, and is considered art by some of the world’s leading museums?
It’s Tupperware, the line of plastic containers whose merchandising, through kaffeeklatsches, has spawned a generation of “Tonight” jokes.
When Earl Tupper invented his ware in the 1930s, he couldn’t have known his name would one day be included in the “Dictionary of 20th Century Design,” or that some of his early creations would end up in the Museum of Modern Art, which acquired a few in the 1950s.
But in 1990 the company, now owned by Premark International of Deerfield, decided to pursue the creation of art deliberately. It hired the noted industrial designer Morison Cousins, whose Space Tel telephone for Atari and Gilette Promax hair drier are in the MOMA, to come up with new designs.
Already, Cousins Tupperware has been snatched up by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum; and the Smithsonian.
And what treasures, you ask, have they rushed to preserve? Well, One-Touch Serving Bowl sets, Wonderlier Bowl sets, Thatsa Bowl, the Double Colander and an experimental container Cousins did, sort of like a concept car, called Zuppa a Noci.
