The Pott brand stands for transcending the traditional silver cutlery that, alongside the “fine china” has long established itself as the prime status symbol on the middle-class dining table. By introducing no-frills forms and “honest” industrial materials, the company created – comparable to reform brands like Thonet or Arzberg – a product type with a whole new identity. Its success at transferring the virtues of classical Modernism onto objects of daily use that exhibit a high design standard made the enterprise from the Bergisches Land region a model brand in its metier. No one could have predicted this development at the time the company was founded, when Carl Hugo Pott was running a small workshop specializing in the “damascene” technique for decorating knife blades. It was only after son Carl Pott entered the family business around 1930 that a few silverware patterns began to be produced. Pott Jr., inspired by the rationalist spirit of the times, pursued a fully new line. One of his very first silverware series, with the fittingly unpretentious name 2716, attracted international acclaim. These eating utensils were of spartan simplicity and went well with the new tableware created by Hermann Gretsch or Trude Petri. Although the model received an award at the 1937 Paris World Exposition, many dealers refused to carry Pott’s unconventional wares. He nonetheless held fast to his Bauhaus-influenced ideas. The reward came in the 1950s, when traditions were being discarded right and left and modernity was the order of the day. Now Lufthansa ordered its on-board eating utensils from Pott, and designs by like-minded souls such as Hermann Gretsch and Wilhelm Wagenfeld expanded the range. The entrepreneur often invested years of development in new types of knives, forks and spoons. Carl Pott designed the majority of his models himself, receiving a sizeable number of design awards for his efforts – back when they still meant something. When the family failed to produce a third-generation successor, the company was acquired by the firm Seibel Designpartner and has since then been allied with Mono, a dream liaison of two brands from the German design aristocracy that, despite certain overlaps, seem to complement one another harmoniously. The catalogue was expanded to include works by young designers. Even though the new house designer Ralph Krämer allowed himself a bit more freedom when crafting his award-winning Picado cheese knife, the up-and-coming talents are nonetheless still measured according to the purism Pott is known for.