Coffee Lids: Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture

Somewhere between r/mildyinteresting and an episode of 99% Invisible is where you’ll find the collective works of Louise Harpman and Scott Specht, the two people most likely to be considered experts on coffee lids. Using the world’s largest collection of coffee lids—more precisely, “unique, patented, drink-through, disposable hot-beverage lids”—the two set out to document these little marvels of industrial design over the decades they’ve been collecting them in their new book Coffee Lids: Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture. This oddly compelling tome contains close-up photographs, lively field-guides to their classification system, patent drawings for the most unique designs and an obsessive level of detail about an essential piece of most of our daily lives that is often overlooked except when it fails. You’ll never look at your coffee cup the same way again. Coffee Lids: Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture will be released on March 13.