Kt Phone

The handset-and-cradle telephone is one of the few household objects whose shape everybody still recognises instantly, a couple of decades after most of us swapped it for a slab of glass. This is that silhouette treated as a small sculptural piece for the home rather than a working device — the body, the handset resting across it, the outline of something that used to sit on a hall table with a notepad beside it. It suits the spots where a bit of character is wanted and floor space is not: a shelf, a windowsill, the top of a bookcase, the far end of a kitchen counter. Among plainer objects it does what an ornament is meant to do, which is give the eye somewhere to land. It is also an easy gift print. Nostalgia does most of the lifting, and a telephone works as ornament and in-joke at the same time.