Mono (cutlery)

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mono is a brand that stands for cutlery and table accessories. Since 1959, the cutlery and stainless steel manufacturer in Mettmann, now trading as mono GmbH , has been producing the mono-a cutlery series, which is considered a design classic.

history

On June 4, 1895, Wilhelm Seibel I. (* July 13, 1843 in Gebersdorf ; † May 7, 1928 in Mettmann) founded the Britannia goods factory W. Seibel in Mettmann. In 1910 the company was already employing 240 workers. In 1911, a branch was founded in Ziegenhain , from which the Hessische Metallwerke Gebr. Seibel emerged. The W. Seibel company received worldwide attention for the first time through the design and manufacture of the cutlery series for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

After the Second World War , the company employed almost 1,000 people. While around 90% of the cutlery factories in Germany had to close in the 1950s, the company no longer concentrated on mass production, but on the manufacture of high-quality designer cutlery. Under the management of Herbert Seibel (born April 26, 1910 in Mettmann), the company produced the mono-a cutlery series designed by Peter Raacke from 1959 . This cutlery series has received international awards and has become a design classic.

In 1984 Wilhelm Seibel sen. his uncle's company and renamed it Mono-Metallwarenfabrik Seibel GmbH in 1985 . The production of the branch in Ziegenhain was stopped in 1984, the factory building and the property were sold. Since the 1980s, in addition to new cutlery series, other tableware products have been added to the mono product range, including the mono classic (1983) and mono filio (1989/90) teapots designed by Tassilo von Grolman with matching glass tea sets and cutlery, also from Grolman. A tea, coffee and dinner set made of porcelain and stainless steel was designed by Mikaela Dörfel in 1993/96 . With mono zeug , Michael Schneider designed a cutlery series inspired by the prehistoric tools of the Neanderthals in 1994 . In 2002 the curved cutlery series mono C2 by Ute Schniedermann was added. In addition to cutlery and tea services, mono also produces table accessories such as the mono concave flame bowl (2004) or the mono rondo vase series (2008).

Since 2000, Wilhelm Seibel jun. and Carsten Seibel the operative business. At the beginning of 2006, the company took over the POTT cutlery brand from Solingen and relocated its production to Mettmann. Since then, the family company has operated in the 5th generation as Seibel Designpartner GmbH . For the 50th anniversary of mono-a and the 25th anniversary of the mono classic 2009 teapot, mono issued special editions of the classics in sterling silver , titanium , gold-plated and coated with black carbon .

In 2016 the mono and POTT brands operate under the name mono GmbH.

Products

mono ring, four-piece cutlery

mono cutlery series

The mono-a cutlery series was designed in 1958 by industrial designer Peter Raacke and has been in production since 1959. The cutlery made of high quality stainless steel is considered the most successful German design cutlery. The timeless, from Bauhaus embossed rectilinear shape and the independent appearance at the time were unusual for a cutlery set. Originally, the individual pieces of cutlery were made from just one piece, the eponymous monoblock.

The cutlery series mono-e and mono-t, also designed by Raacke in 1960, correspond in shape to mono-a , but the handles are covered with dark ebony or teak . Raacke also designed the children's cutlery mono petit and the kitchen set mono 10 + 1 (both 1959), as well as the cutlery series mono ring (1962), mono clip (1972) and mono oval (1982).

mono teapots

The mono classic teapot was designed by Tassilo von Grolman in 1983 and revolutionized the preparation of tea with a pot, because the tea can flow freely in the hemispherical glass body, which is held by a stainless steel frame, as the stainless steel tea strainer is almost as large as the glass body. The mono filio teapot, designed in 1989, is based on the same principle and essentially differs in the freely curved stainless steel frame and the absence of plastic handles.

Awards

The reduced shape of the mono-a cutlery series won numerous international awards such as the 1973 “Federal Good Form ” award from the German Design Council .

The cutlery series mono oval, mono filio, mono C2, mono zeug, the teapots mono classic and mono filio as well as the accessories received numerous awards, including from the German Design Council, form and iF Industrie Forum Design .

A mono book by Gerda Müller-Krauspe was published in 1998 as part of the “Design Classics” series by form publishing house . In the same year, Deutsche Post dedicated a stamp from the “Design in Germany” series of special postage stamps to the mono cutlery series.

Numerous products, especially the mono-a cutlery series and the mono classic and mono filio teapots are represented in the exhibitions and collections of international design centers and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the Museum of Modern Art , and the iF Industrie Forum Design , at the Cooper Hewitt Museum , the Corning Museum of Glass , the Philadelphia Museum of Art , the German Blade Museum , the Design Center Stuttgart and the Design Center North Rhine-Westphalia .

literature

  • Gerda Müller-Krauspe: The mono cutlery from Peter Raacke. Design classics series 18. Verlag form, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-931317-26-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Imprint of the website www.mono.de , accessed on March 4, 2016
  2. Hessische Metallwerke Gebr. Seibel would have been 100 years old , hna.de from December 27, 2011, accessed on August 2, 2018