Pen tray oak and maple

When it comes to the desk debate, the world is divided between the ’full desk’ and ’clean desk’ factions. The former is at home with a surface cluttered with a myriad of useful and obscure objects, while the latter will settle for nothing less than a Zen-like void. Expert opinion favours clearly the clean deskers so that, for purposes of concentration and order, the few objects on the desk top should be well organized and readily accessible. And to garb this fact of life with a mantle of scientific respectability, it’s sold as a "Clean Desk Policy". But the purported "New Conciseness" is nothing more than the well-known saying of designers and architects: Less is more. A saying that is especially true in a work environment.

These desktop utensils are designed accordingly. They’re simple pencil holders and trays made of oiled oak and maple in Steinhöring in Bavaria. They are coordinated so that they can be combined. The smaller of the two pencil holders was originally developed to display writing implements in the stationery shops. After the customers kept asking about it, we decided to have one built according to our specifications. The result is a perfect example of "less is more": The small pencil holder has room for one favoured, most often used writing implement. The larger one stores a selection. All trays are furnished with four little plastic feet to protect the desktop surface.

In desk matters, the working world is divided into "full-cabinet makers" and "empty-cabinet makers". The one likes a work surface overgrown with thousands of things, the other a place of action of almost Japanese-like emptiness. If you ask the experts, the "empty-desk person" has a clear advantage: they say that for the sake of concentration and order of thoughts, as little as possible should be stored, but that it should be well sorted and quickly accessible. And in order that this rather simple wisdom can also be applied with scientific dignity, it is chased through the village or through the office rooms as a "Clean Desk Policy". The claimed "new clarity" is, however, quite the old one - the well-known designer's saying of "less" being "more" is and was, after all, also valid in the working environment.