Developed while completing her master's in Industrial Design at Pratt Institute, Wizard of Oz series marked Laurene Leon Boym's emergence as an independent designer and introduced many of the ideas that would continue throughout her career. Rather than accepting the modernist expectation that domestic appliances should prioritize speed, efficiency, and technological performance, Laurene approached them as cultural objects capable of carrying narrative, memory, and personality.

Inspired by the characters of The Wizard of Oz, the collection reimagined familiar household appliances as domestic companions. A Scarecrow Crockpot, Good Witch Glinda Ice Cream Maker, Cowardly Lion Tea Kettle, Wicked Witch of the East Blender, Tin Man Coffee Maker, and Dorothy Toaster transformed ordinary kitchen tools into characters with their own identities and stories. Rather than disguising technology behind anonymous forms, the appliances embodies emotion, imagination, and the rituals surrounding shared stories.

“I was interested in how women relate to objects and the history of consumerist design.” (Laurene Boym)  

Like the Memphis designers who influenced Laurene’s partner, Constantin Boym, her project similarly embraced new possibilities made possible by increasingly compact electronics. Yet unlike Memphis, Laurene rooted these explorations in the lived experiences of women and the overlooked cultural meanings embedded within domestic life.

Mechanical Brides Exhibition (’93)

One of the defining moments in the project's history came in 1993, when selections from The Oz Family became a featured installation within “Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office” at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, curated by Ellen Lupton. Rather than presenting appliances as neutral examples of industrial design, the exhibition examined how household and office technologies reflect broader assumptions surrounding gender and labor. The Boyms themselves designed the exhibition installation.

Within galleries filled with telephones, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, irons, and advertisements marketed toward women, Laurene's expressive appliances offered a striking alternative to the streamlined products surrounding them.

As Ellen Lupton wrote, the exhibition sought to reveal "the social, sexual, and economic meaning of objects," while encouraging visitors to think critically about the designed environments they encounter each day.

The exhibition deliberately contrasted the Oz Family with decades of products designed and marketed primarily by men for female consumers. Rather than promising liberation through domestic technology, Laurene's appliances openly acknowledged the emotional and cultural relationships people develop with the objects that populate their homes. As Lupton observed in the exhibition catalogue:

“Reading the social text of the designed environment is a step toward achieving power and choice in daily life.”

The Oz Family became one of the exhibition's most memorable contemporary installations, demonstrating that industrial design could simultaneously engage humor, storytelling, and social critique without sacrificing accessibility.

GOOD WITCH GLINDA ICE CREAM MAKER

(available)

Ice cream as the symbol of good (obviously).

Inspired by one of The Wizard of Oz's most beloved characters, the Good Witch Glinda Ice Cream Maker transforms the concept of a cold ice cream maker into an object of warmth and optimism. The design embraces the bright pink personality of a character who infuses the object with meaning and soul.

SCARECROW CROCKPOT

(available)

The symbol of patience personified by a man with plenty of time.

Like the broader Oz Family, this piece investigates specifically how women relate to certain objects. Here, the man (who often spends the least amount of time inside the kitchen) is given the role of the slowest tool in the kithen. The commentary is all too on the (straw) nose.

DOROTHY TOASTER

(available)

The toaster is reimagined as a mailbox: a symbol of home at the center of Dorothy’s journey. Its pattern draws from both the walls of her house and the ruby-red slippers that eventually bring her back to Kansas.

Unlike the fantastical characters surrounding her in the “Wizard of Oz”, Dorothy is fundamentally ordinary - a young woman whose curiosity transforms the world around her. Laurene Boym draws upon this idea by reimagining the humble toaster, often one of the most used appliances in the kitchen, as the emotional anchor of the Oz Family. Rather than celebrating technological innovation, the design celebrates the quiet rituals of home, suggesting that familiarity itself can become a source of meaning.

COWARDLY LION TEA KETTLE

The kettle’s eventual whistle gives an unlikely voice to an otherwise fearful character.

A furry exterior shrouds a vessel built to withstand pressure, playing on the Cowardly Lion’s own struggle with courage. Contrasting materials create a theatrical tension. Like the Lion himself, what appears imposing from the outside proves far more sensitive underneath.

WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST BLENDER

A fitting appliance for a character who meets her end by being crushed. Here, The Wicked Witch of the East personifies a blender, an appliance built around pulverizing and transformation. This mechanical violence turns the character’s fate into function, translating one of the story’s most memorable and dark moments into an everyday domestic object within the home.

TIN MAN COFFEE MAKER

Oil for the Tin Man, coffee for the rest of us.

The metallic coffee maker echoes the character’s body and Laurene Boym transforms the Tin Man’s oil can into a domestic equivalent, connecting the character’s mechanical need to get moving with our own daily ritual of doing the same

WHY THE OZ FAMILY MATTERS

At a moment when at-home consumer products were designed by men for women, and with increased emphasis on speed, efficiency, and technological refinement - Laurene Leon Boym considered the perspective of women consumers and asked how domestic objects might communicate memory, storytelling, humor, and identity within the history of consumerist design. The collection removed function entirely to focus in elsewhere (the objects are purely conceptual and aesthetic), suggesting that the pieces surrounding everyday life also shape our emotional experiences. 

Today, the project remains one of the clearest early expressions of Laurene's unique voice as a designer - one that continues to resonate through Boym Partners’ broader practice where ordinary objects become vehicles for larger conversations.

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