The brand
A store in Ehrenfeld, Cologne’s former working-class neighbourhood and now an ambitious designer quarter, has been creating a stir with its extraordinary convincing product range since 2009: industrial culture comes home – with UTENSIL.
The Assortment
Store owner Anna Lederer takes lamps, furniture, bags and clothes, cutlery and dishes – all familiar from workshops, professional kitchens, laboratories or schools – out of their professional context and presents them as functional and aesthetic products for private use. In UTENSIL’s sale room, a workshop lamp turns into domestic lighting, a laboratory glass becomes a wine carafe, a leisure locker key wristband changes into fashion jewellery, Japanese work shoes are fashionable accessories. Stadium seats become a garden bench, while canteen crockery finds its way onto the coffee table. The carefully compiled range is available in the UTENSIL store in Cologne, as well as Europe-wide via UTENSIL’s online shop.
The Owner
Initiator, curator, merchant: designer Anna Lederer (born in 1976) has always been more interested in the use of everyday objects than in designing more and more new products herself. After her training as a saleswoman, her defined goal was a shop of her own. With UTENSIL, she ennobles anonymous industrial design, and the skilfully curated range provides added value to everyday life, aesthetically as well as practically.