Finally: A Dish Rack That Looks Good Enough to Keep on Display

When’s the last time you stepped into a kitchen and noticed the dish rack? It was probably bedraggled, soggy and worn-out, bearing the weight of every utensil used over the last week. The mighty dish rack is the hideous workhorse of the kitchen, especially when you live in an apartment like mine—it dominates a good fourth of your countertop space. To be fair, while my kitchen is tiny, I’m one of the lucky ones: I have a dishwasher. But my roommate and I have lots of cookware that is dishwasher-unsafe, and thus our dish rack is still constantly booked and busy.

Back to the rack. Thankfully, a newcomer has entered the dish rack canon. Danish homeware brand HAY—known for reimagining the quotidian into actually noticeable objects—took matters into their own hands, releasing their Shortwave Dish Rack by designer Leon Ransmeier. Named after a progression of rigid waves that move over a catch tray, HAY’s design creates a series of pockets that aim to provide the ideal resting place for a range of cookware.

But as my hopes rose that there might be an enlightened countertop option available that 1) works for multiple people or 2) doesn’t make me feel like a toddler, so did my doubts. And thus my journey with the dish rack boiled down to form versus function.

So when my boyfriend told me he wanted to have a few people over for dinner, I asked to bring a plus one.

(First, a disclaimer: We all need to lower our expectations for dish racks at dinner parties. They’re not going to hold all of your prep dishes and cookware, and, if you have nice friends, there should be an assembly line of dish dryers standing behind you for the big boys anyway. This product isn’t here to outperform its traditional counterparts, but just to keep up and look better doing it. Swallow that pill and get back to scrubbing.)

Post-pesto-pasta, my friends and I descended upon the dish rack with all of the dirty items present on the table during time of consumption, which seemed like a fair test. All told, the amount of dishes to be washed and then dried in an efficient manner were numerous: seven plates, two bowls, two cups, six cooking utensils, five forks, and one cutting board. Yes, there was a pot and a few wine glasses out of frame, but I’ve never met a dish rack that didn’t threaten to amputate my glass stems, so we’re looking the other way this time.

The photos already spoil the ending of this tale, but the dish rack was indeed victorious. While the five of us dinner guests partook in the human puzzle that is cleaning up in a galley kitchen, the rack shone as an emblem of organization, catching whatever dripping ceramic we threw at it without much need for human intervention. After all was said and done—dishes balanced and pasta eaten—I admit I was surprised. The design is such a visual improvement that I doubted its function, but it looks like HAY got it right.  

Of course, not every dinner is a party. But if the Shortwave Dish Rack can serve a five-top, it’s good enough for me and my roommate. 

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