Tucker’s Toothpaste Collection
Some ideas are really quite wonderful, and it’s not always easy to articulate why.
Tucker Viemeister (born 14 August 1948, and named after the car that his father Read was designing at the time) is an American industrial designer who helped found many important design businesses: Smart Design, frog design’s New York studio, Razorfish’s physical design group and Springtime-USA. He was also chief of Studio Red at Rockwell Group in New York.
While at Smart, he helped design the influential and award-winning Oxo “Good Grips” kitchen tools. He holds 32 US utility patents, and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt; National Design Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; and the Staatliches Museum, Berlin, Germany.
Tucker has also been a friend and a key REMO design collaborator for 38 years.
We’re not here to talk about Tucker’s accomplishments over many years, but rather the global toothpaste collection that adorns the bathroom wall of his loft in New York’s West Village.
Toothpaste has been around for a while. Since 5000 BCE, the Egyptians made a tooth powder, which consisted of powdered ashes of ox hooves, myrrh, powdered and burnt eggshells and pumice. The Greeks, and then the Romans, improved the recipes by adding abrasives such as crushed bones and oyster shells. In the 9th century, Iraqi musician and fashion designer Ziryab invented a type of toothpaste, which he popularised throughout Islamic Spain.
Tucker’s international collection is something to behold, and our favourite thing about it is its functionality. Each tube of toothpaste is clipped and hangs from a nail. He can choose to brush his teeth using any one of the 439 toothpastes currently on display.
As we’ve already maintained with reference to the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish [RR1:25], some ideas are really quite wonderful, and it’s not always easy to articulate why.
Finally, and by way of providing an apt ending to this story, the beautiful big smile REMO Smile design from 1995 was originally lifted from a tube of Italian Kemphor toothpaste hanging on Tucker’s wall that was given to him by shoe designer Martha Davis.
Video Podcast
In this episode Remo speaks with Tucker about: his famous toothpaste collection (see above), odd ball motor cars, industrial design, AI and other interesting things. It’s a fun chat. Tucker is possibly best known for his work on OXO Good Grips kitchen tools at Smart Design, a company he helped found in 1979. He also founded the Lab at Rockwell Group, and was VP of physical design at the digital agency, Razorfish – and before that at frog design. His collaborations over the years are too numerous to mention. Tucker has also been a friend of REMO (and Remo) for a very long time.
REMORANDOM Chapters
Tucker Viemeister Designs at REMO
Browse more Tucker’s designs HERE at REMO
