Whats you're favourite type of filing cabinet handle?

[Melooon]

In this latest episode of incredibly obscure posts by melon, I wanna talk about filing cabinet handles 

Let's face it, at some point in your life (even in this day and age), you will have to open one - but how is your experience of opening a filing cabinet, and what does that experience say about the values and attitudes of the era the cabinet was made in?

I've been collecting a few example filing cabinet handles, so let's have a vote! - Im sure there are many more out there; if you regularly use a filing cabinet with a different handle please post it below!

Classic! This one is the most comfy for people with big hands, but its also a bit too 1940s for me.


The 1970s! Blocky futurism and early plastic - I kinda love this one - comfy, makes you wanna open it!


Mid-century! Extremely stylish, but too small for larger hands to comfortably use.


The Flat! 80s-90s It's flat for some reason, ugghh Im not sure about this.


Modern-Blocky - this is more like 70-80s but made of cheap metal that feels fragile - extremely comfy


Modern-Classic - prob 1960s, a bit chubby although a little small for larger hands.


String - ????

[phexe]

Its gotta be classic for me  something about it just pushes it that little bit above the others. Flat is my least fave by a long shot tho

Do you just have a bunch of different filing cabinet handles laying around? 

[TheFrugalGamer]

Mid-century all the way. Stylish, efficient, and won't poke you in the leg if you happen to walk too closely to the cabinet.

[Melooon]

Do you just have a bunch of different filing cabinet handles laying around?

Sorta! I'm visiting my dad at the moment; his partner's father ran a photography studio in London from the 1950s-1990s - so there's a lifetime worth of photographs in their original filling systems! In typical me style, everyone else is into the photographs, but I'm more into the filing cabinets 

won't poke you in the leg if you happen to walk too closely to the cabinet.

Oh thats a good point! 

[pixelsafari]

I like the string the best. It's a cool colour and definitely tells a story.  

Modern-classic and mid-century just remind me of old kitchen drawer handles, so they seem super weird to me. Filing cabinet handles should be square

[wygolvillage]

Classic is pretty so I voted for it. It's really interesting to see the changes in taste and design even in such a small object over the years! And string, lol

[BananaBoots]

The classic, for sure. There's just something about it that's

[wris]

Classic and I feel surprisingly strongly about it.

[SilkSkull]

Oh the strange posts of Melooon. I generally prefer mid century, mostly because it's the only one that I see often (working in an old office building does that). I love that this post got me to think of something so specific and weird xD

[prwlnglthr]

Despite the fact that I have biiiig meaty slappers (proportionately, at least, for my height ), midcentury is still my favourite! smth about it is familiar and timeless. I think there's also another style that's similar to but not quite the midcentury or the modern classic that I see all over the place that I also like.

around plenty of string handles (a bunch of the slimmer archival boxes at my job use them for easy pulls without introducing unnecessary metal to the archive!) but never seen a filing cabinet with them. feel like that's not necessarily the most... durable way to pull open a steel drawer. :P

[grovyle]

Mid-century because it's so classy! Also it's only for cool people, so you don't need to use your whole hand to open it, you can just use two or three fingers for enhanced coolery