Elizabowl

Designed by Sarah K. O'Brien.

Here's Christine Lagorio's January 4, 2009 New York Times story about how this remarkable creation came to be.

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A Bowl That Is Fruitful and Multiplies

Oh, those lonely plums, hidden beneath the banana bunch, forgotten until they are nearly prunes. Fill a bowl with fruit and a piece or two will invariably rot.

Enter Sarah K. O’Brien. Her Elizabowl is more honeycomb than basin, its shape-shifting white plastic folds resembling an Elizabethan ruff. The bowl’s petals expand to yield more than a dozen flexible, fist-sized compartments. Each holds one round fruit, keeping it visible and away from the other fruits’ discharge of ethylene gas, which speeds spoilage. When folded, the collar design can cradle one or two grapefruits.

Ms. O’Brien conceived of the bowl last winter as a senior at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She had been seeking a fruit-spoilage solution for the International Home Housewares Student Design Competition, and cordoned herself off in her dorm room with, well, a lot of fruit. “I knew that I needed something to make me really stand out from the pack, being an unemployed, 30-year-old senior,” says Ms. O’Brien, now 31.

Before enrolling in the university’s industrial design program, she had held a job as director of research for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, forgoing college until she could find a focus. “Then I was looking around my room one day and thought, ‘Well, I built my couch; I designed my curtains. I had my table shipped from New York. I realized this was what made me different.”

Ms. O’Brien won the housewares contest. She received a patent in October, and is exploring ways of putting the bowl on the market, perhaps by selling the design to a housewares company.

The Elizabowl still makes her smile. “You can examine something intellectually forever, but it’s someone’s facial expression when they first interact with it that tells if it’s a success for me,” she says. “I can see a kid being excited to eat an apple just so he can move around the bowl.”