Larry Witt is Officially Bestowed the American Prize for Design Given in Conjunction with the Good Design 2026 Program for His Bold Vision that has Transformed the Domestic Landscape for Homes across the U.S. at the Presentation of the International Architecture Awards in Athens, Greece this September 18, 2026.
Since 1994, Larry Witt, the head of OXO International, the New Yorkbased company that has diced, peeled, and salad-spun its way to the American public’s hearts, winning year after year immediate Good Design® Awards recognition for superlative household products, has won the 2026 American Prize for Design.
Mr. Witt, also a President at Helen of Troy Limited, is an accomplished brand builder and innovation thought leader with a lifelong passion for design, creativity, and consumer‑centric problem solving.
An endlessly curious creator, he specializes in industrial design, user experience, innovation led brand strategy, and design thinking, and is widely known for fostering cultures of creativity and leading cross‑functional teams to do their very best work.
Over the past 32 years, Mr. Witt, along with Davin Stowell, head of New York’s Smart Design, has helped to steward and to scale the OXO brand into a global design and innovation powerhouse—a pioneer in “Universal Design,” focusing on creating ergonomic, accessible, and intuitive kitchen tools designed with accessibility for everyone, especially a public challenged by special needs.
At OXO, everyday objects and activities and we see ways to make things simpler, easier, more thoughtfully designed—better.
“If ‘Form Follows Function,’ the modernist principal coined by the famous Chicago architect Louis Sullivan,” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, architecture critic and president and CEO of The Chicago Athenaeum, “OXO has it totally right.”
Under Mr. Witt’s leadership, the company has emphasized functionality, research-driven prototypes, and user comfort, with the iconic OXO Good Grips kitchen utensils, setting a standard for modern, functional design.
“My job is to create a culture where innovation thrives and where industrial designers, design and mechanical engineers, and graphic designers, and other creatives can do their very best work,” Mr. Witt states.
Since the brand’s inception in the early 1990’s, the best, award-winning work was and continues to be the WittStowell collaboration, introducing more than 1,500 unique consumer products, setting new standards for universal design, usability, and everyday innovation.
Most notably, the OXO team developed the soft, over-molded Santoprene grip that created the most notable and distinctive design image for the product and provided tactile feedback and control to gripe, grab, or twist.
The added weight also helped to guide the motion for anyone with a disability.
The ensuing designs remain accessible, affordable, and playful, like all OXO’s products. They subtly guide your fingers to the right position. They give when you squeeze. It’s the root from which OXO’s Good Design philosophy grows.
“OXO’s famous soft rubber handle has evolved over the decades, becoming more streamlined and a tiny bit less unstylish, but nonetheless immediately recognizable to a design discerning audience,” continues Mr. Narkiewicz Laine.
“Here the shape, design, or aesthetic of OXO’s products are primarily based upon their intended function or purpose, demonstrating that beauty solely arises naturally from utility rather than unnecessary ornamentation.”
“In fact, the products designed by Smart and manufactured by OXO have defined ‘Universal Design’ and ergonomics more than any other manufacture or company has successfully employed in these last decades.”
“Also, the OXO team added the concept of sustainable longevity,” emphasizes Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine.
“The durability of OXO products is also an important statement about sustainable utility—designs that never go out of style, that remain truly functional throughout the whole life cycle of each and every product manufactured by OXO.”
“For over 30 years, OXO has won numerous Good Design Awards making design history along with visionary carmakers Audi, Maserati, Lamborghini, Hyundai, and Ferrari.”
“In fact, starting in the early 1990s, the OXO Witt and Stowell design team produced products that became immediately iconic, instantaneously recognizable on any store shelf and in thousands of American kitchens.”
‘With the exceptions of the German housewares brand Braun or the English inventor James Dyson, no other mass consumer company in this early 21st-Century has ever achieved that status,” concludes Mr. Narkiewicz Laine.
Given in conjunction with the Museum’s historic Good Design Awards, which were founded in Chicago in 1950, the American Prize for Design annually honors a specific design practitioner with the highest accolade for producing design that promotes design excellence, innovation, and lasting design.
Candidates for the Prize are sent to The Chicago Athenaeum by design practitioners, press, and educators from around the world and the Museum’s International Advisory Committee, composed of such notable world designers as Richard Meier, Adrian Smith, John Marx, James von Klemperer, Santiago Calatrava, Sergei Tchoban, Graft Architects, and the late Alessandro Mendini.
The Committee’s decisions are based on core criteria: design excellence, innovation, and contributions to humanity and to the public good.
The American Prize for Design is the highest and most prestigious design award in the United States.
Previous Laureates include Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz Chief Designer and Executive Vice President at Daimler AG., British architect/designer Sir Norman Foster, Chris Bangle, Flavio Mazoni, Karim Rashid, Mario Porcinci, and Stacy Wolff, and Paolo Pininfarina.
Last year, Alberto Alessi was bestowed this prestigious tribute.
Larry Witt is a graduate of Western Michigan University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business an Administration.
He began his career in retail management, holding leadership roles with Dayton Hudson Corporation, Allied, and Federated Department Stores in the United States.
He joined OXO in the fall of 1994, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the brand’s product philosophy, design approach, and innovation practices—helping establish OXO as a benchmark for human‑centered design worldwide.
In 1994, when then brand was just under $10 million in revenue, he helped guide and drive the brand’s growth to become one of the leading brands in the home goods industry and the largest single brand in Helen of Troy’s portfolio.
At OXO, he has led sales, marketing, product development, industrial design, as well as engineering, R&D, DTC, and customer service.
As president, he also heads Helen of Troy’s Home and Outdoor segment over seeing a multi-brand, geographically dispersed global business.
He was also instrumental in Helen of Troy’s acquisition of Hydro Flask and most recently Osprey, overseeing the integration and stewardship of the business into Helen of Troy.
He is the driving force behind the segment’s ESG efforts tied to 1% for the Planet, Parks For All, and Design for Environment initiatives.
In 2017, Mr. Witt launched Hydro Flask’s Parks For All to enhance the awareness and appreciation of American nation’s parks and public lands and waters.
For 1% for the Planet, a global community of brands, Mr. Witt has spearheaded giving back to environmental nonprofits that drive positive impact in the areas of sustainable food systems, cleaner air, land, and water and funding environmental education.
In 2021, he also launched a Chefs in Residence Program that serves as a platform for rising culinary stars to offer exclusive culinary tips and techniques as they share how they use OXO tools to create recipes.
Beyond his professional work, Mr. Witt is the co‑founder, along with his wife Gretchen, of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds for research focused on developing new, improved, and less toxic treatments for pediatric cancer—the number one disease killer of children in the United States.
To date, the organization has granted more than $23 million to leading pediatric cancer research centers, helping accelerate breakthroughs that save young lives.
OXO was founded in 1990 by Sam Farber, a mogul in the housewares industry, and his son, John Farber. Sam Farber chose the name “OXO” as an ambigram that renders the three letters in “OXO” the same regardless of their orientation, either horizontal or vertically.
Noting that his wife, Betsy, who suffered from mild arthritis in her hands, was having difficulty gripping ordinary kitchen tools, he saw an opportunity to create more comfortable cooking tools that would benefit users.
Immediately, Mr. Faber, now joined with Mr. Witt, worked with Smart Design to create the initial products in their new line, including one their first endeavors, the OXO Good Grips Swivel Peeler (1989) and a revolutionized version of a OXO Salad-Spinner (1998) both winning Good Design Awards in the early 1990s.
The OXO Good Grips Swivel Peeler has been ranked six out of 100 by Fortune and IIT Institute of Design as among the most important designs in history.
Sam Farber sold OXO to General Housewares Corporation in 1992. General Housewares Corporation was acquired by World Kitchen LLC. in 2000. In June 2004, Helen of Troy Limited bought OXO housewares.
Smart Design went on to develope the influential “OXO Good Grips” line, which popularized the concept of Universal Design to mass retail market and created consumer demand for better performing, easy-to-use kitchen tools.
With Davin Stowell’s intuitive design success, the OXO brand continued to expand and evolve while remaining true to one simple but powerful idea: create products that make everyday life easier.
Other products, including the OXO Soft-Handled Can Opener (1997), the OXO Angled Measuring Cup (2001), the OXO Pop Containers (2007), the OXO Insulated SS Mixing Bowls (1995), the OXO Etched Box Grader with Removable Zester (2019), and the OXO Rapid Brewer (1924), have captured the most important, top design prizes in the world and almost yearly, the prestigious and historic Good Design Awards by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design since the early 1990’s.
Other leading U.S. industrial design firms have also designed OXO products and won Good Design Awards: Marco Perry of Pensa for the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner (2021).
In 2007, OXO’s universal-design principles were introduced to the toolbox. Designed by Smart Design, the OXO Hardware Hand Tools Line contains 20 innovative tools that offer improved performance, comfort and ease-of-use.
For example, a soft bumper at the top of the claw hammer ensures no marks are left on the work surface when removing nails.
The multi-purpose snips have spring-loaded handles to reduce hand strain. And in a simple one-handed motion, the blade in the utility knife is easily replaced.
The OXO Good Grips Hardware Hand Tools line is designed to improve performance, comfort, and ease of use, featuring ergonomic rubber handles to reduce hand fatigue.
This line of over 20 innovative tools includes hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, and pliers, aimed at providing better functionality than conventional tools.
“Since the initial launch of 20 kitchen tools, we’ve designed hundreds of products for OXO, helping guide and support them to new categories including cleaning, bath, laundry storage and organization, gardening and the OXO Tot children’s brand,” states Mr. Stowell.
“The degree of clarity to the OXO brand is quite rare. Most companies struggle to expand without losing what made them great in the first place. Not OXO.”
“This notion of ‘making everyday life easier’ has become the driving force behind everything OXO does, and it’s allowed them to expand into adjacent categories very successfully.”
“Most recently, we launched an inaugural line of electric appliances, OXO On.”
“Today, our partnership continues as we work to widen OXO’s lead as one of the world’s most admired and wonderfully comfortable housewares brand.”
“OXO’s success has been an unwavering dedication to the principles of Universal Design—the belief that products should be accessible by the broadest spectrum of users.”
“Together with OXO, we’ve visited hundreds of homes and spoken to thousands of people over the years to study how they use products,” concludes Mr. Stowell.
The official presentation of The American Prize for Design for 2026 takes place at a Gala Reception and Awards Dinner on Friday, September 18 during “The City and The World Athens Symposium” in Athens, Greece organized together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies along with recipients of the 2026 International Architecture Awards.
Tickets for the Ceremony and Dinner are available by contacting Konstadina Geladaki, Director of Communications at +30 210/342 8511 or by email at konstadina@europeanarch.eu.
A tribute to Larry Witt and OXO together with over 1,200 winning products from the 2025 Good Design Awards is published as a catalogue: 2025-2026 Good Design Yearbook edited by Christian Narkiewicz-Laine for Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd.
The catalogue is available through The European Centre by email konstadina@europeanarch.eu or at www.metropolitanartspress.com.
For press information and photographs, contact Jennifer Nyholm at jennifer@chicagoathenaeum.org.
NOTE TO REPORTERS AND EDITORS: Photos of the 2026 American Prize for Design are available for download. For more details on the award and previous winners, visit The Chicago Athenaeum’s website at chicagoathenaeum.org
About The Chicago Athenaeum (www.chi-athenaeum.org) is a global nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide public education about the significance of architecture and design and how those disciplines can have a positive effect on the human environment.
About The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies (europeanarch.eu) is dedicated to public education concerning all aspects of the built environment—from entire cities to individual buildings—including the philosophical issues of arts and culture that ultimately give the final shape to design. A high emphasis exists on contemporary values and aesthetics, conservation and sustainability, and the theoretical exploration and advancement of art and design as the highest expression of culture and urbanism.
