Some of my favorite stories to work on for Dwell’s culture vertical are ones that unpack the history of specific objects through the lens of what they reveal about their time periods. So I was all ears when writer Rachel Silva pitched me a deep-dive on the rise and fall (and potential revival) of the “gossip bench”—a mid-20th-century furniture category spawned by the spread of household landlines, and made largely obsolete when things went cordless.
In the piece, Silva explores how the once-ubiquitous gossip bench, or telephone table, “reflects the gendered assumptions that shaped domestic life” from the 1930s through much of the postwar period “as much as it does the era’s optimism and ingenuity.” She traces how the furniture piece came into fashion and makes the case for why it might have another moment as more people try to detach from their smartphones. It’s a great read.
—Sarah Buder, Senior Culture Editor
