Wednesday
May252011
#0022 Mixers & Blenders
Audio & Electrical
The collector: Luiz Gustavo Miranda, Product Designer, Curitiba, Brazil.
The collection: Home appliances - desk fans, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners, and mixers and blenders..... especially from the 70s but I also have some stuff from other decades.
The story behind the collection...
I was always fascinated by home appliances as a child - the electric motors, the colors, design, the sound of them working, all left me amazed. I used to leave behind my toys to play with the floor polisher, vacuum cleanner and the blender. I can't figure out how many hair dryers of my mother's I broke when I was four or five years old whilst trying to discover how they worked.
Some years later my focus shifted to drawing and I forgot about the home appliances until I was about 16. Here in Brazil people frequently "update" their appliances for new ones and the appliances I used to see when I was younger had almost vanished. It made me want to get some of them to keep as a souvenir from that time, especially the ones I had most enjoyed playing with.
When I was about 16 I started to search for them. I found many interesting products and the collection quickly grew in size. Blenders and mixers are very popular here in Brazil, as mom's supply their children with cakes, desserts and smoothies, These two appliances were the most present in my childhood. Maybe the fact that my mother and relatives never let me access them because they were hazardous made me even more eager to get hold of them. So these two appliancess became my favourite ones to collect, plus they are often exchanged for new ones so they are quite easy to find. My collection originally started for nostalgic reasons but later the design style became my main target. I've found a large variety of designs including many blenders from the 60's or older that I'd never seen before, and I like to repair or restore them. My collection began with appliances I was given by friends and relatives, particularly blenders and hairdryers, but I started collecting seriously in 1999 when I got a job (and my own $).
My collection consists of about 120 blenders, 30 mixers, 150 or more hairdryers, about 20 desk fans, near to 100 electric showers and three vacuum cleaners. I used to also have a collection of old light bulbs and light fixtures, but a few years ago I got rid of them. I store my collection in a cabinet and shelves in a room. I'm always thinking about ways to show them. I'd love to share them with other people, but never get an oportunity to do it, maybe I always had the bad luck to meet people who don't share the same interest in this stuff.
When I started to study Product Design I noticed that it was difficult to find data about home appliances, so I also began to search for information from the oldest technical assistance stores I could contact, looking for the manufacturing history and product documentation from these appliances. I found a good quantity of material. It helped me in some of my college work, and also helped some friends of mine. Later I decided to post my pictures on the internet along with some of the technical data I've collected.
When I find another appliance in better condition than the one I have I end up buying it. The problem is when I find different colors or finishes, because I start to accumulate multiples of the same item. I'm a little bit obsessed, but sometimes they lose their power over me as happened with the light bulbs. I used to love them but when storage became an issue and my new occupation didn't leave me time to spend with them I decided that I'd already enjoyed them enough and got rid of them. I don't have any regrets so maybe I'm not as obsessed as I used to be.
My favourite find is a floor polisher I played with when I was a child, which was hard to come across and took many years to find. There is a blender from the 40's and another from the 60's that I would still really like to obtain for my collection. When I find them, I can consider myself satisfied!
More of Luiz's collection can be seen on his Flickr page. He has also shared some of the information he has discovered about the history of blenders and electric showers on Wikipedia.
Luiz's other hobby is making storyboards about his favourite childhood heroes, the Thudercats. You can take a look at these on Deviant Art.
All images © Luiz Gustavo Miranda and used with his kind permission.
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