Tokyo Kamen

It’s hard to imagine Manhattan’s Upper East Side as a hotbed for contemporary design, but the museum shop at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is not only one of the best museum shops I’ve ever seen, it’s also one of the best destinations for great design in the city. Gregory Krum, the museum’s Director of Retail, has spent several years curating an impressive collection of …

Kellner Plug-in Figures

Invented in Germany in the 1920s these toy Plug-In Figures building kits hinge (literally) on the flexible "jummi" rubber connectors patented by Georg Kellner. A former airplane builder, who started a successful model plane company, Kellner created simple kits with interchangeable parts that could be combined to make posable figures. Five of these kits Tim, Hoppy Hare, Squeek the mouse, Edward + Erna and The …

Etch-A-Sketch Clock

Angela Yuan, a young NYC-based mechanical engineer, has built a fun little clock from an Etch-A-Sketch. Each minute that passes, the machine tilts the toy, shakes it clean and mechanically draws the correct time.