Obituary: Sam Farber / Created ergonomic kitchen products
June 24, 2013 12:09 am
By Margalit Fox / The New York Times
Sam Farber, who was spurred by a fiend in the form of a vegetable peeler to start Oxo, the housewares manufacturer whose ergonomic rubber handles grace its kitchen utensils in many homes, died Sunday in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 88.
The cause was complications of a recent fall, his son John said.
Oxo took root in the late 1980s, when Mr. Farber, ostensibly retired, and his wife, Betsey, were making an apple tart in their rented home in the south of France. Preparing the apples, Mrs. Farber, who has mild arthritis in her hands, was exasperated by their unwieldy peeler, which she found painful to use.
Mr. Farber knew housewares -- he had founded Copco, a maker of brightly colored enameled cast-iron cookware, in 1960 and run the company before selling it in 1982. He immediately discerned a gap in the market: kitchen devices that were as comfortable as they were functional, designed not only for cooks with hand problems but for all cooks.
With John, the couple founded Oxo in New York City soon afterward. (Mr. Farber chose the name for its backward, upside-down and vertical graphic symmetry.) Enlisting Smart Design, a New York industrial design concern, they created Oxo's Good Grips line of kitchen tools.
Made with a spare, minimalist aesthetic in mind, the tools sported what would become the line's distinctive hallmark: fat black handles of a soft plastic known as Santoprene, shaped and angled to be easy on the hand.
The line was unveiled in 1990 at the Gourmet Products Show in San Francisco. Though its prices left some commercial buyers skeptical at first -- a Good Grips potato peeler cost about $6, compared with about $2 for a conventional peeler -- it soon proved a hit with consumers.
The company's products have won many design awards and are ubiquitous today in hardware and housewares stores and in chain retailers like Target and Kmart.
Mr. Farber sold Oxo to the General Housewares Corp. in 1992. His later ventures included creating a line of kitchenware with his son for the celebrity chef Mario Batali.
Mr. Farber was born in New York City on Nov. 16, 1924, and reared in Yonkers, just north of the city. Pots and pans were in his pedigree: an uncle, Simon Farber, founded the cookware maker Farberware on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1900. His father, Louis, helped found Farber Bros., makers of glass and silver-plated serving ware.
During World War II, Mr. Farber served with the Army Air Forces in Turkey and North Africa. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard in 1946 and later joined his father's business.
Today, Oxo is owned by Helen of Troy, a maker of personal care products. Its Good Grips line now comprises hundreds of items, including cleaning, gardening and barbecue tools.
"It's hard to think of a vegetable peeler as radical," Mr. Farber told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. "But I guess it was."
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I've got a ton of Copco cookware and Farberware and like the OXO tools I have.[this post was last edited: 6/27/2013-12:51]
June 24, 2013 12:09 am
By Margalit Fox / The New York Times
Sam Farber, who was spurred by a fiend in the form of a vegetable peeler to start Oxo, the housewares manufacturer whose ergonomic rubber handles grace its kitchen utensils in many homes, died Sunday in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 88.
The cause was complications of a recent fall, his son John said.
Oxo took root in the late 1980s, when Mr. Farber, ostensibly retired, and his wife, Betsey, were making an apple tart in their rented home in the south of France. Preparing the apples, Mrs. Farber, who has mild arthritis in her hands, was exasperated by their unwieldy peeler, which she found painful to use.
Mr. Farber knew housewares -- he had founded Copco, a maker of brightly colored enameled cast-iron cookware, in 1960 and run the company before selling it in 1982. He immediately discerned a gap in the market: kitchen devices that were as comfortable as they were functional, designed not only for cooks with hand problems but for all cooks.
With John, the couple founded Oxo in New York City soon afterward. (Mr. Farber chose the name for its backward, upside-down and vertical graphic symmetry.) Enlisting Smart Design, a New York industrial design concern, they created Oxo's Good Grips line of kitchen tools.
Made with a spare, minimalist aesthetic in mind, the tools sported what would become the line's distinctive hallmark: fat black handles of a soft plastic known as Santoprene, shaped and angled to be easy on the hand.
The line was unveiled in 1990 at the Gourmet Products Show in San Francisco. Though its prices left some commercial buyers skeptical at first -- a Good Grips potato peeler cost about $6, compared with about $2 for a conventional peeler -- it soon proved a hit with consumers.
The company's products have won many design awards and are ubiquitous today in hardware and housewares stores and in chain retailers like Target and Kmart.
Mr. Farber sold Oxo to the General Housewares Corp. in 1992. His later ventures included creating a line of kitchenware with his son for the celebrity chef Mario Batali.
Mr. Farber was born in New York City on Nov. 16, 1924, and reared in Yonkers, just north of the city. Pots and pans were in his pedigree: an uncle, Simon Farber, founded the cookware maker Farberware on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1900. His father, Louis, helped found Farber Bros., makers of glass and silver-plated serving ware.
During World War II, Mr. Farber served with the Army Air Forces in Turkey and North Africa. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard in 1946 and later joined his father's business.
Today, Oxo is owned by Helen of Troy, a maker of personal care products. Its Good Grips line now comprises hundreds of items, including cleaning, gardening and barbecue tools.
"It's hard to think of a vegetable peeler as radical," Mr. Farber told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. "But I guess it was."
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I've got a ton of Copco cookware and Farberware and like the OXO tools I have.[this post was last edited: 6/27/2013-12:51]
