Armoury
Kitchen Choose your weapons
HOT METAL
Beautifully built German kitchenware in the coolest powder shades. What’s not to love?, asks MATT BIELBY
You know what I like in the kitchen? Slick retro kit in snappy colours. Then I think we’ve just the thing – or, rather, a whole bunch of things. Wesco (or, more properly, M Westermann & Co. GmbH) is a classic German kitchenware outfit, probably best known for their Pushboy and Kickboy bins but offering a whole range of cool, sturdy, old-timey hardware perfect for injecting a little ’50s cheer into any kitchen. They’ve been around since 1867, so their stuff ain’t some retro replica deal – it’s the real thing.
I love them! The bins look great! And they come in a vast range of colours and specs too, from £129.99 to about twice that, depending on size and style. You can team them with all sorts of other smart kit, too: bread bins and kitchen-roll holders, knife blocks and stovetop kettles, all in stainless steel or powder-coated or galvanised sheet steel. We’ve very
fond of the retro scales with a clock, for instance, coming in just under £70.
You can imagine this stuff making for great gifts. Indeed! And especially as Kitchens Cookshop in nearby Bath now carries a wide selection. Some of the smaller items are in-store (things like the kettles and scales), a whole bunch more are on the website, and there are further cool pieces – like the Spaceboy XL, a bin shaped like a chubby 1950s rocketship, at £295 – that you can only get on special order. The bins are amongst the items you can only buy online, but you can check out examples in the shop to see how solid they are. Some bits – like the airtight Grandy bread bin, built to a 1940s design – come in assorted sizes, so you could press the smaller versions into various alternative uses, like keeping jewellery or whatnot.
Pushboys and
Kickboys, scales and bread bins: all perfect for a slice of Mad Men kitchen cool
I have to say, though: for something that’s so very German at heart it all looks a tad American to me. These guys started as a family run outfit from the Sauerland, a heavily forested area on the Ruhr – the Möhne reservoir, famous from The Dam Busters, is here – and have always made metal household goods, though their first pedal bin didn’t appear until after the war, and the Pushboy range is even more recent, inspired by the huge American bins the company’s current MD had seen as an exchange student in ’70s Texas.
That’ll explain it then. Hey, even Mercedes cars once had tail fins; a US influence on Teutonic design is nothing new!
✱ Wesco is stocked in Steamer Trading Cookshop in Cirencester and John Lewis, Swindon, as well as online via South West cookware specialist Kitchens:
www.kitchenscookshop.co.uk
THIS MONTH – BBQ school – Chimney starter – Rubber tongs
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