Curiosities

Wendt & Kühn has been making hand-crafted treasures for more than 100 years.  Always staying true to the grand design legacy and the artistic and creative work left to us by the founders of the company, Grete Wendt and Grete Kühn, and the designer Olly Wendt.  With our “Curiosities” we provide a product group which comprises unusual and remarkable individual pieces.

While Grete Wendt focused almost exclusively on the creation of figurines, her student friend Grete Kühn used her talent to paint and decorate wooden chests and boxes. With her distinctive brushwork and rich imagination, she turned wooden containers into aesthetic works of art of enduring value.

Every splinter box is an example of art and craftsmanship at its very best, demanding exceptional dexterity on the part of the painter. Faithful to the original designs, the boxes, made of the finest wafer-thin wood, are painstakingly painted by hand and intricately decorated with floral scrolls and ornamentation.

100 years after the founding of Wendt & Kühn, an almost forgotten product line has been brought back into the collection: splinter boxes. Until well into the 19th century these wooden boxes were used primarily for packaging. Today, they are considered to be one-of-a-kind handcrafted treasures themselves, as exceptional dexterity is required to apply their painted patterns.

This video shows you the skill and artistry that goes into their painting. Prepare to be amazed!

In the coming years we intend to select with great care, and at regular intervals, a number of genuine treasures – we have called them curiosities – from Wendt & Kühn’s great treasure trove of designs, which we will produce exclusively to order, one by one.  These pieces require a very high degree of craftsmanship from the skilled craftsmen and women at our workshops.