![]() ![]() We like to think of such objects as being created by serendipitous or ‘Eureka’ or at least clearly defined moments, but the origins of the paper clip are fuzzy and confused. ![]() Yet the paper clip does not quite fit our conventional understandings of an iconic object. 2 With the gentle, sliding action of a paper clip we bring paper, and some small element of our lives, under control. At ‘Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things’, an exhibition at the Science Museum in London held in 2011-12, it was celebrated as a ‘humble masterpiece’ and a ‘utilitarian and aesthetic marvel’. Despite the odd variation – coloured paper clips with plastic coatings, square-edged rather than rounded ones, jumbo clips with corrugated finishes, avant-garde versions with a ‘v’ replacing the inner curve – the design of the classic paper clip remains unchallenged. Cheap and easy to reproduce, paper clips have remained virtually the same for over a hundred years. The way that it turns in on itself with its three hair-pin bends and rounded top and bottom – in France paper clips are known as ‘trombones’ – seems like the perfect marriage of form and function. ‘In our vast catalog of material innovation, no more perfectly conceived object exists.’ 1 The double oval shape of a paper clip is instantly recognisable. ‘If all that survives of our fatally flawed civilization is the humble paper clip, archaeologists from some galaxy far, far away may give us more credit than we deserve,’ the design critic Owen Edwards argues in his book Elegant Solutions. ![]()
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