The Craft of the Handle: How Modernism Reimagined Touch

Scandinavian Modern — Newsletter 03

From the handshake to the fist-bump, or the simple stroke of somebody’s arm, the hand is our principal conduit for touch. It is not surprising that modernism devoted so much attention to figuring and reconfiguring the humble handle—whether attached to an object or a building.

The handle is often the point of contact between the body and the physical world. Door furniture, teapot lids and drinking vessels are where design meets social custom and everyday use.

Even in a screen-based world, the handle remains a touchstone of experience. Its abundance makes it a useful detail through which to trace the history of modernism.

Visit an eighteenth-century house—or watch a costume drama set in one—and the design of handles changes as you move from service spaces to reception rooms. In kitchens and storerooms, handles reflect function and utility: load-bearing, durable and easy to grasp, with wide loops and substantial construction.

Climb through the house and practical use increasingly gives way to social performance. An entrance handle might become ornate; the handle of a porcelain teacup may shrink to a delicate flourish, shaped as much by fashion and etiquette as by comfort. Social function replaces straightforward utility.

Here, design becomes decoration and a signifier of wealth and position. Twentieth-century modernism consciously looked instead towards the service quarters and workshop: function rather than display.

This choice was both practical and ideological. Modernism sought to improve the world, and problem-solving became a central tenet of design. Decoration could be understood as something that disguised an object’s purpose. Adolf Loos’s provocative essay Ornament and Crime, published before the International Style was named, helped establish this polemical modernist position.

Yet the new language was never culturally uniform. Its local differences are visible in the handle too.

I remember 1970s England, when the growing popularity of European lager led pubs to ask whether you wanted a “straight glass or a handle”. Lager usually arrived in the straight glass. The absence of a handle made it feel continental—as if one were briefly on a foreign holiday.

The handle has always been slightly problematic for modernism: is it decoration, or is it necessary function?

The question is especially visible in glass, where the handle traditionally offered a glassmaker an opportunity for intricate display. Designers such as Kaj Franck often dispensed with it. His waisted carafes for Iittala use the body of the vessel itself to give purchase to the hand.

In Per Lütken’s Canada glassware for Holmegaard, bowl, stem and foot are drawn into a continuous form. The result is almost aerodynamic.

At Arabia, Ulla Procopé designed the celebrated GA teapot, which wears its cane handle like a halo. The warm, fibrous handle contrasts with the ceramic body, creating a sensorial meeting of surfaces. It is not simply decorative: it separates the hand from heat and draws on Japanese ceramic and tea traditions while remaining truthful to each material.

Problem-solving also encouraged designers to make handles integral to an object’s wider use. In Jens Harald Quistgaard’s cookware, the cross-shaped lid grip allows the inverted lid to act as a trivet. A single element performs two jobs.

Timo Sarpaneva’s cast-iron pot uses a detachable wooden handle to lift the lid and manage the vessel. The design acknowledges weight and heat while introducing the warmth of timber to iron.

These designers observe and interpret behaviour almost like anthropologists. They are drawn to the home, the kitchen and the opportunities domestic life provides for ceremony and cultural practice.

Eating and drinking are among our richest everyday rituals. As in the eighteenth-century house, they give design a stage on which to perform and interact with our lives—with or without handles.