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SkeuomorphSkeuomorph is a term used in the history of design and also in other fields including archaeology. It refers to a derivative object which retains now useless design elements which were necessarily present in the original. Skeuomorphs may be employed to add an air of authenticity and/or antiquity. It derives from the Greek words for 'vessel' and 'shape'. Historically, high status items, such as metal tableware, were often recreated for the mass market using pottery which was a cheaper material. In certain cases, efforts were made to recreate the rivets in the metal originals by adding pellets of clay to the pottery version for example. The mortice and tenon joints present in the trilithons of Stonehenge may be examples of skeuomorphs, derived from earlier timber structures. In the modern era, cheaper plastic items often attempt to mimic more expensive wooden and metal products though they are only skeuomorphic if they include genuinely non-functional elements. Examples include the authentic-looking brass rivet caps on jeans which cover the functional steel rivet beneath or indeed the watch pocket present on the jeans. A good example of a skeuomorph is the QWERTY keyboard which first appeared on the type-writer in 1873. The layout was designed so that frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document. The QWERTY layout is still used today on computer keyboards despite being functionally redundant as there are no mechanics within a computer to get stuck. It has been argued that toenails and the human appendix are examples of natural skeuomorphs.
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