Thursday, July 17, 2025

This New Designer Kitchen Device Is Only a Stick. So Why Are We Obsessed With It?

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Alongside making metal, brass, and wood sculptures, Richardt has created minimalist designs for greater than a decade for Danish design studio Frama: A day mattress, a lounge chair, candle holders, a shelving system, a “very minimalist” lamp for the restaurant Noma.

A person flipping a pancake with a wooden stick

Sophie Charara

Frama handed on Device One, although, so Richardt stored it at residence till he found kitchenware studio Veark, additionally in Copenhagen, which makes instruments impressed by skilled kitchens. For cofounders Daniel Ronge and Christian Lorentzen, it was love at first stick.

We jest concerning the sheer simplicity of this factor, however Richardt’s inspiration got here, in fact, partly from utensils in Asia. Cooking chopsticks, typically made out of bamboo, have lengthy been utilized by skilled stir-fry cooks for tasting and sampling within the kitchen.

“I had some chopsticks at residence that I used to stir my oatmeal within the morning for a few years, and it was just a little too small for doing that,” he says. “Then I assumed I may make it bigger right into a design that might additionally flip a pancake. In Japan they really have some relatively large chopsticks, however they nonetheless use them in pairs after they stir, they usually’re fairly enjoyable to deal with.”

And there’s extra practicality. Wood utensils can final for many years versus years for silicon options (if correctly cleaned and saved), and there was a lot of discussion of late over what number of poisonous chemical substances common black plastic spatulas would possibly expose customers to.

A person flipping mini pancakes with a stick with other kitchen prep on a counter

Sophie Charara

In design phrases, it’s clear we’ve been heading on this course for some time, primed to crave an increasing number of of much less and fewer. Minimalist Joseph Joseph kitchen instruments and stacking bowls we’ve been unusually drawn to for a while, whereas Jony Ive has achieved for computer systems what his predecessors in industrial design did for, say, iconic chairs and lamps.

Summary wood Scandi child toys in beige, cream, and funky grays, although, will be fairly infuriating. They need to be vivid crimson and vivid inexperienced and make a lot of noise. And blocky, featureless nativity units we can not abide. Ludicrous. They’re merely taking the piss. However I believe we will safely say that you simply can not get extra minimalist than a stick.

As WIRED senior editor Jeremy White exclaims, “How can one thing so ridiculous be so fascinating?” Is a stirring stick inherently extra macho than a spoon, maybe? Extra like one thing The Bear’s Carmy Berzatto would possibly throw throughout a kitchen?

“It’s a humble software. I used to be stunned on the easy factor of getting a stick stirring your meals,” says Richardt with just a little giggle. “It took me again to one thing … I couldn’t clarify it, but it surely was a pleasant feeling. I sort of felt that I used to be taken again to the Neanderthals.”





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