VintageGriffin.com

It's sad, but there are some folks who live in parts of the country that not only do not have any diners, but somehow missed out on the Golden Age of the Diner, the '40s through the '60s. Diners have been a part of smalltown, big town and even urban America for some time. They're compatible with everything from Normal Rockwell through Billy Joel. Young folks gather there to scarf down fries and talk up romances. Older folks gather there to talk politics, family, and hometown doings.

The trophy is a classic form. You see it carved in wood by Gringling Gibbons in stately English country homes. You see it molded in plaster above 18th-century doors in French chateaux. You see it repurposed in motifs decorating Victorian "hunt tables." It's been a decorative thing, meant to symbolize something -- mastery over animals, over wartime opponents, or a discipline, like music.

Well, Emiko Oki, a Japanese-born, London-based designer, has repurposed the classic form of the trophy. It's no longer just decorative. Now it does something.

In November, at some point many of us start seriously thinking about cooking. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and we think about the bountiful feasts that we'd love to attend or give. Perhaps we imagine ourselves as the gracious host who spins pomegranate comfits, apple-spiced stuffing, and fig-walnut-cranberry sauce from the odds and ends on one's larder, effortlessly. Helped by merciful, culinary elves who seek to ease our burden, much the same way Rumplestilskin spun straw into gold for the fair-but-unskilled maid. Perhaps we fantasize about bringing the dish to the family table over at Aunt Berenice's that will be talked about and flattered over all others.

Well, I think about those things too. And I think about just how much harder our tasks would be if we were cooking in the 18th century.