There's a Gadget for That: the lemon juicer

My most absolute favorite kitchen gadget is Tool’s Design lemon juicer found at the MOMA design store. I have two. I show it to all my friends when I am cooking. It will be my gift of choice at Christmas. Everyone needs one. Or two. It is the perfect thing.


Most people use a classic type of juicer which consists of a shape similar to the inverted fruit, usually attached to a juice catching dish. And like most juicer’s, because the shape reflects the shape of the fruit, the design seems like a natural solution to the problem of extraction. All function. No style. Waste of space. Please discard.


In my world, Phillip Starck became the person who turned the ordinary into something innovative, controversial and yet practical. For years his 1990 Alessi Juicy Salif dominated the well-designed juicer category. While Starck’s piece is whimsical with a playful sense of menace (it reminds one of the aliens from War of the Worlds), it takes up too much space with its 11.5 inch height and 5.5 inch diameter and it tends to occupy a place on the counter as an objet. It has become precious. It screams: “look at me”. Starck is rumored to have said: “My juicer is not meant to squeeze lemons, it is meant to start conversations”.




The Tool’s Design lemon juicer was designed in 1995 by Henrik Holbaek and Claus Jensen. It won the Danish Formland prize. It also starts conversations.



It is a polished stainless steel spiral 3.25 inches long and .75 inches in diameter. Operation is simple: Insert the tool directly into the fruit, invert and, with a squeeze, all of the juice pours out. Until I discovered this tool, I had never found a device that gets this much juice out of a lemon or lime.



Vitruvis (30 B.C.) said that architecture must contain three elements simultaneously: Commodity, Firmness, and Delight. Paul Goldberger translates this to present day and states that a good “building must be simultaneously useful, well built and visually appealing.”1. I believe that these three elements should always be considered crucial to good design.


What I love about the Tool’s Design lemon juicer is that it does just that: it strides beyond its function. It is elegant, simple, sturdy. It implies motion, it demands action. It also fits neatly on my finger and would make for a nice piece of jewelry were not the cutting edge so sharp. There is a grace and elegance to it. The curve is soft but it also has an element of ferocity because of the sharp edge that drives into the fruit. It is the ultimate in simplicity yet works very hard in its functional capacity. It is sculpture. Everything in the kitchen should have so much thought given to the design.


The designers were inspired by the method a juice seller used to sell orange juice to tourists in India. The man entered the bus, softened the orange with his palms, jabbed a piece of tubing into it and pressed out a glass of juice. For Holbaek and Jensen “the problem comes first”2 and they decided to examine how to make a consumer tool that did the exact same thing.



They knew it had to be sharp and had to break through the separate chambers in the fruit. They came upon their solution through a great deal of thought and hard work. Ultimately the solution came about as a “complete surprise and really a lucky strike”2. They were considering the threading geometry of a screw and while wrapping a piece of aluminum around a broom handle; they stumbled upon the complete product. It was a project that solved itself.


In the end the tool only works on lemons and not oranges but “unknowing about that, we started with a blank canvas which is always a good way to start if you want to discover something new.2


Like the Juicy Salif before it, this tool is a conversation starter. Over the last few decades the kitchen has become the epicenter of home entertainment. When friends gather for dinner, everyone crowds around the kitchen either participating in the cooking or participating by keeping the cook company. Gone are the days of the sequestered housewife serving the guests like a waitress. This is the arena in which people will observe and absorb cooking techniques. The lemon juicer by Tools Design has never failed to spark curiosity, admiration and conversation.




1Why Architecture Matters by Paul Goldberger. p.7

2From an interview conducted with Henrik Holbaek. Feb 21,2010