SIMPLICITY 2

In India, the poorest, those lowest in caste, eat very often off of a banana leaf. Those a little bit up the scale eat off of a sort of low-fired ceramic dish. And a little bit higher, why, they have a glazed platter, a thing they call a thali. And there get to be some fairly elegant glazed thalis, but it graduates, if you’re up the scale a little bit more, to, why, a brass thali. And a bell-bronze thali is absolutely marvelous, it has a sort of ring to it. And then there are things like silver-plated thalis, and there are solid silver thalis, and I suppose some nut has had a gold thali that he’s eaten off of, though I’ve never seen one. But you can go beyond that, and the guys that have not only means but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding go the next step, and they eat off of a banana leaf.

Charles Eames (paraphrased by Koenig) from his Norton Lectures (1971)