'Look at this thing.' – #106

In two years of sending this newsletter, I’ve regularly tried to define the filter behind the products.

Mostly because at some point I needed a sentence for the website. I usually use:

‘Things I’d buy.’

‘Beautiful stuff from Europe.’

‘High-quality products from lesser-known brands.’

‘Off-the-radar things worth discovering.’

All of them are kind of true. And they work okay. (At least well enough that some of you are now reading this. So thank you for “falling” for at least one of those sentences ;)

But none of them ever felt fully right to me.

Because I don’t share only things I’d buy. Some things are too expensive. Some are too weird. Some I have no real use for.

I also don’t think beautiful gets it right.

Beautiful is part of it, of course. I like beautiful things. I studied architecture, so somewhere in the back of my head there is still an old Roman dude called Vitruvius mumbling something about strength, usefulness and beauty.

But the word I keep coming back to is much simpler.

Interesting.

Not a great word, I know. It sounds like something you say when you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

But it’s probably the truest one.

Interesting is when I open a product page and stay there longer than planned. Because the color is brave or because the shape feels familiar, but not copied. Because someone made a thing out of a material I would have walked past in real life.

Or because it clearly did not come from the same big grey soup where most new cars, toothbrushes, suitcases and office lamps seem to come from now. I mean this only half-jokingly: I do think a lot of everyday things have become uglier and more same-same over the last few decades.

So when someone makes an ordinary thing less boring, I notice. And want to share it with you.

That’s usually the filter. Not whether I’d buy it or whether it’s beautiful.

The real test is: would I send this to a friend with a tiny note saying ‘Look at this thing.’

Now that I think about it, those four words are basically the whole newsletter.

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If you’re new around here: Every week, I share 5 of the nicest products from Europe I’ve discovered in the past 7 days.

I scout, you explore.

With love 🌞
Jakob

P.S.: Missed the last edition? The German electric vehicle from Twike that lets you pedal to support the battery was the most-clicked item.

EVAANNA makes these hand-shaped brass or bronze knobs in Budapest. On a plain cabinet, they’d do a lot with very little. I’d also happily use them as organic towel hooks in a bathroom.

Reader Gergana recommended DiFOLD’s 750 ml bottle that folds down to 5.5 cm when empty. Designed in Bulgaria, folded like origami, and probably a good travel or hiking companion.

Jaalo’s Money Sssaver is a ceramic piggy bank shaped like a snake and made in Italy. Saving money suddenly feels a bit more dramatic. Also, it looks like it might silently judge your last impulse purchase.

GIOIA is a cheerful little jewellery box by insalata-mista, the Bolzano studio of Matthias Pötz and Ada Keller. It has that nice “furniture or object?” quality. I haven’t seen this one live yet, but we did a few letterpress workshops with them in the past, and those were exactly as fun as you’d hope from a studio called insalata-mista.

PYSCIS is based in Austria, but these Sardines “Royale” are produced in Spain with fish from Galicia. The packaging looks like someone actually cared about paper. I appreciate that. Tinned fish has come a long way in the past years with several unique brands. This is a nice example.