llly communication

It’s a sorry thing to say, but very few objects in my home give me a pure aesthetic thrill. One that does, that rustles up a tickle of joy every time I see it simply by virtue of its haecitas, is my Illy coffee tin.

Its smoothness, its elegant buffed metal sheen, the discreet Illy logo and deliberately constrained text, all say (sotto voce) “style”. It perches in the fridge, untainted by the usual detritus of leftovers and speculative ingredients cluttered around it. It looks, in short, just as an Italian tin of coffee should.

The real pleasure only starts, though, when you take it out of the fridge. The coated metal is cool, but not painfully so. This is the first delight. The second is that as it is exposed to the warmer air of the room it gains a featherlight condensation, the gentlest acknowledgement of its chill freshness. The third, oh rapture, is removing the lid.

The lid is deep, nearly an inch. And it unscrews. Unscrewing a deep metal lid could be excruciating. Just thinking of two rough planes of metal scraping over each other makes my back teeth ache. But the design of the tin is so artful that all that is required is the fingers rested around the lid and a soft half turn. There. Even as I catch the first mouthful of the aroma, already I’m looking forward to putting the lid back on.

The perfection of this simplest of objects drives me mad. I imagine convocations of Italian tin designers arguing late into the night over the precise size of the lid, the length of the movement, the size of the tin itself, so that it may sit exactly in the curl of the hand. They repair to the bar, remove their jackets (this is serious stuff), furiously point to the photographs of Futurist or Roman objects (depending on inclination) they have brought to add weight to their case for a lid taller than a thumbwidth, or text only in the bottom half. In a corner, the Illy semiologist furiously strikes through any text not considered absolutely necessary for the communication of the soul of a coffee tin. Late that night, someone steals back to the office with the perfect design. The rest continue to argue, about everything and nothing.

Some weeks later they reconvene at the same table in the same bar. There is a loud discussion of the merits of the new figure-hugging Italian football team shirt before someone, apologetically, turns to the matter at hand. Each tries to stifle the tension he is feeling, but under each open collar an adam’s apple bobs uncertainly.

The prototype tin is produced from a white cardboard box and placed on the table. It is beautiful. At first nobody dares touch it. They even look at it only glancingly, for fear. Finally, soaking up the deference of the others, the alpha designer leans forward, and exercising the absolute minimum of movement, grazes the lid open with the palm of his hand.

There is applause, laughter; there are hugs; more wine is ordered. It will be a long while before each of them saunters home in the warm night air to his apartment, jacket slung over shoulder, proud of his part in the achievement.

I know it can’t possibly have been like that, but for the pleasure that tin gives me, I hope it was.