Customer Reviews

Atomic Kitchen: Gadgets and Inventions for Yesterday's Cook

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The housewife in the atomic days of the Fifties was the ideal person for manufactures to sell their products to and what better place than her kitchen, didn't every home need new appliances, furniture, color schemes, lighting and especially gadgets to make everything so effortless, well, that was the promise. The two hundred plus colorful pictures in this book provide a backward (though essentially superficial) glance at what was on offer.

Unfortunately this book is a sequel to the publisher's previous title 'Atomic Home' (ISBN 1888054891) and like that book it has the same faults, short blocks of copy that don't relate to the photos on the same page, none of the images are dated (would it really take too much effort to say that the painting on page thirteen is a Saturday Evening Post cover for September twelve, 1959?) pictures overlap each other, colored backgrounds and shapes (with a different color on each spread, too) frequently get as much space as the illustrative material.

Of the three chapters the one devoted to Gadgets and Accessories is the most intriguing, thousands of small companies across the Nation must have churned out handy gadgets and rather uniquely they all seemed to be sold in dreadfully designed packaging. Just how often would the spaghetti fork (page 154) with a small handle at one end to rotate the tines, be used, most likely never? How about an automatic butter curler...no home should be without one! There are lots of ads showing these dubious products and some incredibly flat still-life photos as well.

Atomic Kitchen is a colorful look back to that suburban palace but for a more organised view check out 'Inspiring 1950s Interiors' (ISBN 0764304585) admittedly its excellent colored photos cover the whole house but there are fifty-two kitchen sets to be seen. Gadgets get a good showing in Michael Goldberg's 'Groovy Kitchen Designs for Collectors' (ISBN 0764300105) with three hundred photos of appliances and gadgets and some actually look like they could be useful.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Odd the way style is...the once considered tacky and gaudy kitchen designs of the 1950's are now hot among collectors and homeowners today as everyone is going retro. Walk into a Target store and see how they've adopted to the look of the 1950's with their brightly colored new appliances and gadgets. I guess after years of having everything being so uniform and style not mattering, people are again looking to spice up their homes with color. "Atomic Kitchen" is a great source of reference for people looking to capture that retro look, or just take a glimpse back in time some 50's years ago to see what homemakers of the time had available to them.

The book begins with an introduction to...the kitchen and points out how the kitchen came to replace the family hearth as the central gathering place for friends and family. As new, smaller homes were built in the 1950s, the dining room was often replaced with a larger kitchen in order to serve both functions of preparing food and eating it. Thus it became important for homemakers to be able to express their style but also have great functionality as well. For the first time, appliances not only had to work good, but they had to look good as well. Color was the order of the day. Not only with small appliances but large appliances as well. Consumers had an entire rainbow of colors to choose from, from bright reds and yellows to soft blues and pinks, and everything could be color coordinated.

Atomic Kitchen provides hundreds of vintage advertising that display the latest and greatest in new items for the home...all designed to be better and make your life easier. The 50's saw an explosion in new gadgets for the home. You had to have a handy new gadget to do everything from opening cans and jars to crushing ice, to making waffles. If there was a task that needed to be done, some manufacturer was going to come up with a new, electric way of getting it done automatically. Rival had an entire line of such items like the Juice-o-mat, Slice-o-mat, grind-o-mat, ice-o-mat, and who knows how many more. One could buy knife sharpeners, potato chip makers, sandwich toasters, ravioli makers...no mundane task was ignored it seems. But even with all these new appliances, they were still heavy-duty, often made of stainless steel and built to last years...unlike the almost disposable appliances we have to contend with today.

It's such a treat just to browse through this book and see the many wonderful items, many long-forgotten, that were in use fifty years ago. These ads give us a glimpse into an era when these new appliances must have been looked at as life-savers for people's kitchens. Just a fantastic book!

Wow! What a fun and interesting book. It brought back many delightful memories as I was a young girl in the 1950s with a Mother that absolutely loved to cook. I was especially tickled to see the "sandwich toaster". Mother used to make all types of delicious sandwiches using that gadget! If you enjoy collectibles, you won't want to miss this book.

Must admit, I have no clue as to how the other reviewer could not enjoy this trip thru time. It reminded me so much of my childhood and the things my mom had in her kitchen. I could almost smell the cookies from the oven. The author really did a great job!! I have already purchased a few other copies as it is going to make a great Christmas gift for my sisters Doris and Shirley.

Fun book with retro kitchenalia. I sell Retro Kitchenalia in Chicago and I enjoyed this book.

This book, ("Atomic Kitchen - Gadgets and Inentions For Yesterday's Cook", by Brian Alexander), is LOADED with 1950s advertisements, drawings, abd photographs. There are also some photographs -- presumably from the author's own collections -- taken, (also presumably), later on -- but these "stand-alone" photos of authentic 1950s items, (often also displaying their original packaging), give a wonderful, "now is also then" feeling: these items, photographed by themselves or with only their packaging, outside of advertisements, and photographed RECENTLY, give a "reality feeling" to these items that retro-ads -- even with photos within, and however nostalgic in tone or typeface -- can't truly give. It is the REALITY of EACH ITEM, that the reader of this book wants to see, I think -- even more than the wonderfully nostalgic advertisements that also comprise much of this book, but which can now be seen, (in this book anyway), only within the ads.

There are pictures of ads, and stand-alone, (recent) photographs of objects and gadgets, in colour, on almost EVERY page in this wonderous book. It is a true "playground of nostalgia" for baby-boomers, (those born from 1947- 1963), and those born slightly before...who may be a few years older, and thus might even be able to remember the 1950s, (and early 1960s), a bit better than the younger "baby boomers" do.

Although some of the items pictured are indeed dated, (aluminum cookware, for example -- which has recently been connected to the creation Alzheimer's Disease in many individuals), very much more of the pictured items seem as good, (or often, much better!) than more "modern" products offered by manufacturers today! To me, the most obvious example of this is the refrigerator, (a Westinghouse Imperial), pictured on page 106. It has a HUGE freezer on the bottom, (aproximately one-third the size of the appliance), with two shelves -- one pull-out and one stationary. The refrigerator section has three shelves, (making for four storage areas), on top, (plus an additional, enclosed, what-looks-to-be-a-meat-keeper, sandwiched in on the top, largest shelf), and two crispers on the bottom. The door-storage, in the refrigerator, consists of eight separate sections, including one large enough to store what looks to be a gallon of milk, (presumably a gallon of milk in a GLASS container...which has a similar shape and form to a plastic jug), two large, graceful old-shape Pepsi bottles, plus a 32-ounce carton of orgnge juice. Below this is a section for refrigerating fresh fruits and vegetables. The door section of the freezer, below it, also has two shelves, each full of much food. A little red-headed girl stands in the center of the open refrigerator freezer, wearing pigtails, jeans, a sleeveless blouse, and a mischievous grin on her face. Her face is twoards he viewer, but she holds in her hand a glass, which is being effortlessly filled by the refrigerator's enclosed liquid-dispenser!
Having a child stand at the open refrigerator makes it seem bigger, but even without her reduced height, I would judge, from the refrigerator's interiour and what is inside, that this late-1950s or early 1960s refrigerator had at least 25 cubic feet of space inside!
(All this, and freon, too! I want one! I want one!)

Many of the dated ads show drawings of customers looking at the photographed or drawn product with eyes SO wide, and suprised, happy smiles on their faces SO big, that the only thing I can think of comparing them to is the probable expression on the face of archaeologist Howard Carter when, in 1922, he first gazed upon the untold treasure in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamon! An interesting refrigerator idea is shown on 94, where, instead of kitchen cabinets installed hyt above the kitchen sink, it is a horizontally-placed, three-door refrigerator one finds there! On page 37 is a cute drawing of a mother piloting a small, "Jetsons" style space ship, with a bag of groceries next to her, her daughter and the family dog in the seat behind her, as she comes close to the family ranch-style house, aiming for a perfect landing! On the opposite page, (and throughout the book), are pictues of 1950s and early 1960s kitchen arrangements -- ALL of them, even the smallest, sure to strike envy and sighs from the owners of today's, all-to-common "galley" kitchens.
On page 157 is an ad for "Lustro-Ware" plastic housewares, with two ladies shopping for, and one lady having already happily acquired, their Lustro-Ware -- all of them dressed as if to attend a formal afternoon wedding, and, (presumably), having found just the right gift(s) at just the last moment! (The caption accompanying this ad mentions that Lustro-Ware was used in the movie "Picnic", and that Plas-Tex mixing bowls, (not shown) appeared in Holly Golightly's (Audrey Hepburn's), kitchen in "Breakfast At Tiffany's".)

Decorator refrigerators, (with doors made-to-order in the plaid, (or other) design of one's choice -- on page , a floor-plan, (and photgraph), of a kitchen, (the floor-plan showing not one, but two windows), on page 43, ladies in ruffled aprons, an ad for various Styron plastic kitchen accessories, with prices, (including a four-piece cannister set for $2.98), on page 134, a "Sandwich toaster" for 50 cents, (page 137), potato chip makers, egg-poachers, a lady who looks dressed up to go out -- yet her dinner is there, in the foreground, in her new Tappan above-the-burners oven, (on page 111), and, on page 110 -- an interesting misprint of an ad for Sunbeam Waffle-Baker, wherein, (if you look -- closely -- at the drawing of the four people seated around the table, beaming at the newly-opened waffle-maker, you will see that the two people in the back have heads drawn with foreheads SO high they could pass for outer-space aliens, whilst the human-looking man on their right, with NO surprised expression on his face, yet seems to have his (un-needed) toupe up above his head......etc., etc. All are here, all and more -- in glorious, full colour. Some of the captions do not fit the pictures -- but that's OK with me, as these misplaced captions DO give extra information on other, related, 50s house and housewares facts.

This is a book for baby-boomers and slightly, (or more than slightly), older people who remember the 1950s and early 1960s with great fondness. It is also a book for younger people who want to get a taste of what it was really like, in those early, post-World War II years, when everything, at least on the surface, seemed totally and completely perfect, and want to talk about those times more with older relatives and friends. I myself remember thinking how great it was to be around in, say, 1958 -- because I thought all the problems of the world, (which had been many, as I learnt in my history class in school), seemed to be over....and now, humanity was entering a perfect and blissful period. Of course, we DID have those pesky Communists to deal with -- but they would probably be defeated in good time. Everything just seemed so great, (or would be, when I finished high-school and was done with homework!)

Well, those days may now be totally gone -- but who's to say that
serenity and perfection of the Human Race, and the elimination of its problems can't come about? Certainly this book -- loaded with ingenuis inventions, and charming advertisements, gives hope that it might, indeed happen. Things actually were NOT perfect in the 1950s and early 1960s. But --who's to say that we can't have a perfect world by, say, 2050? Not me. And not the inspiration that this wonderful book offers, either!

This is an excellent review of the post-war kitchen enjoyed by many Baby Boomers' parents. All of the nifty gadgets like push-button stoves, formica counters, and shiny new ranch homes all sparkle in this feast for the eyes. There are full-color illustrations and lots of vintage 1950s gadgets that were invented then and are still in use today!

Like the author, I too am a collector of kitchen gadgets. I collect gadgets from all time periods so I was intrigued by the Atomic Kitchen and its focus on the period following World War 2 and up through the 50's. The photos are clear and crisp. Many from popular magazines I recall seeing at my folks. I found the book to be informative and insightful. While I am a collector, I would recommend this book to any one with an interest in kitchens and collectibles.