The people I hang out with  don’t seem to use hot trays as much as my parents did.

We still have dinners and buffet type parties at each others’ homes, but it seems we’re ok with having stuff get cold really quick on the table (as for cold things getting warm, that’s a totally different matter). I think we usually associate hot trays with the 50’s and are used to seeing these bulkly old glass and wood affairs that are essentially an electric oven heating element encased in a glass and metal shell.

Then, sometime in the late 70’s along comes Salton Canada who rethinks the whole heating tray thing and table flips your buffet.  Sort of.

I love the idea to reduce the form to just the glass and then embedding the heating element in the glass. No temperature control, but not really necessary anyways. The brown colour is going to be part of an upcoming photography project whenever I get around to it.  Gotta love the packaging photography too — everything’s lit really warm, compared to today’s blown-out whites and superclean catalogue looks.

Sorry about the ugly watermarks. I hastily experimented with it and will get around to fixing that eventually.