In addition to creating sculptures from steel, brass and wood, Richardt has also created other works minimalist designs for more than a decade for the Danish design studio Frama: a daybed, a lounge chair, candle holders, a shelving system, a “very minimalist” lamp for the Noma restaurant.
Sophie Charara
However, Frama passed on Tool One, so Richardt kept it at home until he happened upon the kitchen utensil studio Vearkalso in Copenhagen, which produces tools inspired by professional kitchens. For co-founders Daniel Ronge and Christian Lorentzen, it was love at first sight.
We joke about the sheer simplicity of this thing, but of course Richardt’s inspiration came partly from utensils from Asia. Cooking sticks, often made of bamboo, have long been used by professional stir-fry chefs for tasting and testing in the kitchen.
“For a few years I had some chopsticks at home that I used to stir my oatmeal in the morning, and they were a little too small for that,” he says. “Then I thought I could make it into a design that could also flip a pancake. In Japan there are actually some pretty large chopsticks, but they are still used in pairs when stirring and are really fun to handle.”
And there is even more practicality. Wooden utensils can last for decades compared to silicone alternatives (with proper cleaning and storage), and there is a lots of discussions There’s been debate lately about how many toxic chemicals regular black plastic spatulas could expose users to.
Sophie Charara
As far as design goes, it’s clear that we’ve been heading in this direction for some time, prepared to demand more and more from less and less. We’ve been strangely drawn to Joseph Joseph’s minimalist kitchen appliances and stacking bowls for some time, while Jony Ive has done for computers what his industrial design predecessors did for iconic chairs and lamps, for example.
However, abstract wooden Scandinavian baby toys in beige, cream and cool gray tones can be quite annoying. They should be bright red and bright green and make a lot of noise. And bulky, monotonous nativity scenes that we can’t stand. Ridiculous. They’re just doing nonsense. But I think we can safely say that it doesn’t get more minimalist than a stick.
Jeremy White, editor-in-chief of WIRED, exclaims: “How can something so ridiculous be so desirable?” Is a stirrer perhaps inherently more macho than a spoon? More like that The bear Carmy Berzatto could throw through a kitchen?
“It is a humble tool. I was surprised at how easy it was to be able to stir the food with a stick,” says Richardt with a little laugh. “It brought me back to something… I couldn’t explain it, but it was a nice feeling. I somehow felt like I was transported back to the Neanderthals.”
