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. Dutch 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.