The company called Isma represents a first for 3rings. As the sole manufacturer I’ve come across whose self-professed identity is French-Taiwanese, they bring a curious cross-cultural collaboration to bear manifest as a “close-knit team that thinks that design should be for everybody… Isma makes smart and special products, at an affordable price.” Isma in fact represents a tri-partite international approach, since fabrication happens in Hangzhou, a couple of clicks North of the Island of Taiwan and onto the imposing mainland of China. The varied perspectives are doubtless writ large upon the prodigious surface area of the fascinating Kross Faucet, reputedly the “thinnest faucet on the market.”

Kross Faucet. Designed by Isma.

A New Shape in Water Delivery

Isma had garnered praise previously for Duo—a clever design in which the spigot is doubled by a piggy-backing doppelgänger that functions as the on/off lever—winning the Red Dot Award for 2010. Surely those self-same judges will consider Kross for similar accolades, as this razor-thin kitchen mixer multiplies the meaning of “silhouette.” In fact, Kross reminds me of the survivors of disaster of so many Warner Brothers cartoons: the hapless victims of Bugs Bunny, et al., who, having been squashed by a plummeting piano or walloped by an airborne anvil, revert to a curious state of two-dimensionality–the heft taken from their bodies thus leaving them with all the integrity of a sheet of paper.

Kross has a similar aesthetic, though it will never waver in the wind. To the contrary, the faucet appears as stiff and stalwart as any kitchen sentry. The sheet-like shape of its water rivals in intrigue its resemblance to an over-sized, upside-down “J.” And its equally over-sized and ergonomic handle provides pinpoint control over temperature and volume, while its ceramic cartridge assures a steady, even flow. Kross is currently Available in black, nickel, and white, but I concur with another reviewer who recently opined that Kross would be equally intriguing in matte red, blue, and gray. How about yellow, fuchsia, and lime green for that matter? Certainly the pure joie de vivre of Kross could accommodate such fabulous flights of fancy.

Via Yanko.