Buonasera from Merano.

Every couple of months, someone replies to ask why I don’t put prices next to the products.

And I get it. It looks like laziness, but it’s not.

Prices anchor you.

If you see “340€” before you’ve looked at a chair, you stop looking and start deciding whether you would buy it. The chair has become a purchase before it has had a chance to be interesting.

I do mention prices when they are part of the story. This week, a €4.50 greeting card sits next to a bar cabinet that probably costs more than my first car. That range is exactly why they belong together.

The products in this newsletter aren’t competing with each other, and I’m not ranking them by what looks like good value.

The only question is whether something is worth knowing about. If it is and you want to know what it costs, click it.

The price is usually on the maker’s site. (Occasionally, you have to request it, which I never find especially encouraging ;)

The second every item in a list comes with a price, the list becomes a shopping cart.

This is not a shopping cart.

So here are five things worth knowing about.

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 birthday edition last week? The sling bag from Labo Mono was the most-clicked product.

© RSVP Berlin / Martin Z. Schröder

‘I Recommend Vodka’ greeting card 🇩🇪

There are few occasions that cannot be improved by receiving the words "I recommend Vodka" in the mail. Martin Z. Schröder prints this €4.50 card in Berlin using lead letters from the Wiener Grotesk typeface of 1912 and an Art Nouveau printing block made from copper-plated lead. It comes with a lined envelope and is available from the very good R.S.V.P. stationery shop in Berlin.

And if I ever order hand-printed business cards, Schröder's workshop is where I'd go.

© Lounge.60

Lounge.60 bar cabinet 🇮🇹

Lounge.60 is a drinks cabinet inspired by Italian interiors of the 1960s and 70s. It is handmade in Italy with dark walnut interiors, solid Canaletto walnut drawers, thin steel legs, and a custom stainless-steel ice bucket. The outside can be lacquered in any Pantone color, this one is Verde Milano. Each cabinet is numbered and can carry its owner's name. Buying one also gets you into the Lounge.60 Owners’ Club, for people who take hospitality, design, and the ritual of making a drink unusually seriously.

© STUDIO82

The Ocean Bowl 🇬🇧

The Ocean Bowl by Brighton-based STUDIO82 looks like a wave that has been stopped just before it folds over. Each one is made by hand, so the curves and color pattern vary slightly from bowl to bowl. It is sold as a decorative object rather than serious tableware, but should be very good at holding keys, jewelry, or absolutely nothing.

© Karlen

Oskar mirror with shelf 🇨🇿

Karlen's Oskar combines a round mirror with an angular little shelf for the things you otherwise spend five minutes looking for before leaving home. The Czech studio makes it from plywood in blue, red, dark green, or a multicolored version, and can also adapt the dimensions or color if you ask. It arrives flat-packed, but requires only two screws rather than a free weekend and a degree in furniture assembly.

© Semper & Adhuc

Instantanée LIP mechanical watch 🇫🇷

Semper & Adhuc builds new watches around old mechanical movements that might otherwise have disappeared. It began with watchmaker Colin de Tonnac collecting orphaned mechanical movements as a student, then restoring them and building new French-made watches around them. The Instantanée LIP is the idea in its clearest form: a hand-wound LIP R100 made in Besançon between 1958 and 1970, restored and placed inside a new 37mm steel case with a French-made dial, hands, and leather strap. A small opening in the back lets you watch its fifty-year-old heart keep going.

Buonasera from Le Marche.

I turn 40 tomorrow.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing down things I’ve come to think are true, in the order they surfaced. I stopped at 144 and killed 104 of them. The remaining 40 cover taste, Sina and the kids, work, money, rooms, bad Italian coffee, a pygmy owl outside our window here in Le Marche and the maximum useful height of a drinking straw. One is the cheesiest thing I believe.

The full list is on my blog. I’m not previewing it here. Either you want to read 40 things someone wrote the night before his birthday, or you don’t.

I don’t think I’ve gotten wiser since 30. I’ve just gotten more comfortable saying what I actually think.

But now on to this week’s products.

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 ceramic cup from Niki Ceramics that I found at a concept coffeeshop in Ostuni was the most-clicked product.

© Sukie

Sukie Hiking Adventure Travel Journal 🇬🇧

Sukie’s Hiking Adventure Travel Journal contains 160 pages across six different paper types, plus six glassine pockets and six kraft envelopes sewn into the binding. Places for the boarding pass, the receipt you couldn’t bin, the sticker that came off something. Its card cover is silkscreen printed by hand, so each one comes out a little different. Designed in London and entirely plastic-free.

© Odject Studio

Odject Studio Shrimp pendant lamp 🇳🇱

The Shrimp pendant lamp by Odject Studio arrives as a flat pack of polymer pieces. You assemble them yourself, and somewhere in the process a 60-centimeter shrimp takes shape and announces itself on your ceiling. The Amsterdam studio makes it in two logical versions: Cooked, cast in warm orange, and Raw, cool and translucent.

© Labo Mono

Labo Mono Modular Sling Bag 🇬🇧

Labo Mono’s Modular Sling Bag arrives as a collection of parts. Choose a medium or large shell, then add either a rope carry system with a carabiner or a flat alpine strap. You can change, repair, and upgrade the individual components later instead of replacing the whole bag. Labo Mono backs the system with a lifetime warranty, which makes the modular promise feel considerably less theoretical.

© Absurde Studio

Absurde Studio leather bag charms 🇪🇸

Absurde Studio makes its leather bag charms in Ubrique, Andalusia, a town with a long history of producing serious leather goods. They turned a strawberry ice cream into a leather charm for your bag. It would also make a very good key ring for our apartment in Merano, ⁠Late Checkout. I may have just found a business expense…

© Amble One

Amble One electric vehicle 🇵🇹

The Amble One is an open-air electric vehicle with four seats, no doors and a cork interior. It is street-legal in the EU, has more than 100 kilometers of range and starts at €20,000 plus VAT. Reservations are now open for delivery in 2028.

Buonasera from Puglia.

I usually research coffee before I research groceries.

Wherever we arrive, before the bags are open, before I know where the nearest supermarket is, I usually know where I’m getting coffee the next morning. I wrote about this awhile back.

The coffee is only part of it. Good coffeeshops often come with shelves: beans, ceramics, books, olive oil, some tin you suddenly need for no clear reason. Someone has already done the sorting before you get there.

Yesterday, one of those shops was Sponda in Ostuni. It’s a six-month-old coffee bar and small shop started by three friends from Milan who moved south after working in communications.

I had a flat white there in a small ceramic cup by Niki, who appears again below.

Sponda is one kind of shop I like: new, careful, still taking shape.

The other kind is Brugnara in Merano.

Brugnara is an Eisenwaren shop. Ferramenta, if you’re south of Salorno. It has the energy of a place that has no interest in becoming more photogenic for the internet. There is a man with a blue t-shirt behind the counter, tools on the wall, and a quiet assumption that you are probably about to buy the wrong thing unless someone stops you.

You walk in with a problem. You walk out with the right screw, brush, hose part or small piece of quality engineering you didn’t know had a name. Often it costs more than you planned. Often that is the point.

Sponda and Brugnara could hardly be further apart. One is six months old. One feels like it has survived half a century of retail ideas by ignoring them.

But they do the same job.

They filter.

They decide what is worth putting on a shelf before you arrive.

I like the internet for finding things, obviously. But the better kind of discovery still happens behind counters, in places run by people who know the difference.

That is how I found one of this week’s five.

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 Honoré “notebook for life” from Louise Carmen from Paris was the most-clicked product.

© Olaio

IK chair 🇵🇹

Olaio’s IK Chair was first made in 1969 and still looks perfectly current. The Portuguese furniture maker relaunched in 2016 by going back into its own archive. Made to order in several woods, colors and seat options. Also, their website gives each product category its own typeface. I like this.

© Calma Compania

Plant Based Mosquito Spray 🇦🇹

I have not tried Calma Compania’s Plant Based Mosquito Spray. On our first night in Puglia, I would have reached for it. This Austrian, DEET-free spray is plant-based, safe for kids from 12 months and looks more like skincare than pest control. Which, for a mosquito spray, is already a small victory.

© Viarco

The Cheating Pencil 🇵🇹

I know, a pencil is a pretty old-school product. But A) I love stationery and B) I went to elementary school in the 90s, so we’re fine. Viarco’s The Cheating Pencil has a multiplication table printed dark-on-dark along the side, almost invisible unless you know where to look. Viarco is Portugal’s only pencil factory, which makes the whole thing even better.

© Modern Metier

Semplice kitchen island 🇩🇰

Caia Leifsdotter’s Semplice Kitchen Island, sold through Modern Métier in Paris, is built like restaurant equipment. The large version is 3.4 meters long, with a 5 mm brushed stainless steel top, oak cabinets and solid oak drawers. Love it. But pretty expensive.

© Niki_Ceramics / Sponda Ostuni

Handmade coffee cups 🇮🇹

I drank from one of Niki Ceramics’ handmade cups yesterday at Sponda in Ostuni. It held a flat white, which is already a small apology to Italy. (Sorry!) The cup was small, slightly uneven, and nice in the hand. I wouldn’t have found her online. I found her because Sponda had already done the looking.

Buonasera from Lake Garda.

A few days ago, I stopped to admire a wall socket.

It was inside one of the two towers at a new holiday retreat in South Tyrol that I’m helping with branding and marketing. The sockets are coral red, individually spray-painted by German socket manufacturer Jung and unusually good-looking for something mostly used to charge a phone beside a bed.

(they look better irl than on this shaky photo i took.)

Apparently, you cannot just call your electrician and order 27 of them. Jung first checks where they will be installed and whether the architecture is right for them. In this case, someone came from their Austrian office to inspect the almost-finished building.

This is absurd, very German and exactly the level of attention I want someone to give a wall socket.

Vitruvius had a rule for this 2,000 years ago. He said a good building needed firmitas, utilitas and venustas: strength, usefulness and beauty. Leaving out the last part meant you had not quite finished the job.

A lot of everyday objects now seem to get away with two out of three.

Here are five things from makers who paid attention.

—

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 Roxy Espresso Machine from Munich was the most-clicked product.

© Louise Carmen

Honoré refillable leather notebook 🇫🇷

People wait outside Louise Carmen’s two Paris boutiques to buy a notebook. The Honoré explains some of it: a full-grain leather cover made in France, two replaceable notebooks inside and a large leather pocket, all configured to suit how you actually write. The paper will run out. The cover is meant to stay with you for decades, becoming less pristine and more yours along the way.

© Quadro Design

OG-NM301 stainless-steel stool 🇮🇹

QuadroDesign usually makes taps and bathroom fittings from stainless steel. For the OG-NM301, it applied the same material logic to a stool. Designed by Andrea Ferrari with Milanese design company NM3, it is made entirely from stainless steel and can live outdoors or inside a shower.

© SONMO

SONMO espresso cups 🇪🇸

The glaze on SONMO’s espresso cups begins with pine and olive wood ash from its own estate in Mallorca’s Serra de Tramuntana. Its color and texture shift with the trees, the firing and that year’s material, so no two cups come out quite alike.

© Vestre

Vestre EDO public bench 🇳🇴

If I were mayor of a city, I would probably buy the street furniture from Vestre. The Norwegian company treats a public bench like actual furniture: the EDO was designed by Torbjørn Anderssen and Espen Voll, made at Vestre’s factory in Magnor, and built so its parts can be repaired or replaced. Public space would improve considerably if fewer cities bought everything from the depressing half of the municipal catalog.

© MODU

MODU Tiny Ride toy 🇩🇰

MODU’s Tiny Ride is modular, made in Europe from recyclable foam and food-grade plastic, and rated to carry 50 kilograms, which means a tired parent can sit on it too. Its wheels turn in every direction, and the pieces remain compatible with the rest of the MODU system after the child outgrows the riding phase. (Looks interesting, just the wheels give me a bit office chair vibes).

Buonasera from Merano.

We just got back from two days of hiking in the Pfossental, so for once, I had the good sense to prepare this intro before disappearing into the mountains.

I wrote the follwoing on Friday night.

~~

I’m typing this late on Friday night with my six-year-old daughter asleep on the couch next to me, snoring a little louder than the music in the dimly lit room.

She had already gone to bed, woke up again, wandered into the living room, and apparently decided the couch was the better place to continue sleeping.

We’re both still slightly sticky from one of those properly hot summer days. The windows are open, the living room is a mess, and I don’t have the heart to carry her back yet.

This week was full of moments like this.

A few days ago, I picked her up from kindergarten for the last time. I’ve walked through that gate many times, usually thinking about lunch, work, or if we need to pick something up at the supermarket on the way back. This time, I knew it was the final one.

My son finished elementary school too. And somewhere in between the end-of-school chaos, my daughter turned six.

The last sixth birthday this house will throw. (Unless our family planning takes a spectacular and currently unplanned turn.)

Most last times don’t announce themselves. One day you carry your child home, read a certain book together, or wave through a kindergarten window. Then life moves on, and months later you realize you never did it again.

This week, I caught a few of those moments while they were still happening.

It didn’t make the week sad. It made everything feel unusually clear and alive. Time was moving, and I was paying attention.

She was still asleep beside me. The living room was still a mess. And I have five very good things waiting in my tabs.

Two days and quite a few kilometers later, they’re still there.

Let’s get to them.

—

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? For the first time ever, three links tied for the most clicks: 1) the king size hammock for up to 6 adults, 2) a ‘just-in-case’ case for two cigarettes and gum, 3) the wikipedia page for the shoes my parents wore when they met 😅

© Kibu

Buildable Headphones 🇬🇧

Kibu makes children’s headphones designed to be built, repaired and taken apart again. Created by London studio Morrama with Batch.Works, they use replaceable 3D-printed parts and no screws or glue. Much better than teaching kids that broken means bin.

© TILT

FUNGI 05 Lamp 🇧🇪

FUNGI 05 is a one-off ceramic mushroom lamp by Brussels studio TILT, founded by Laetitia De Moor and Patrick van Roy. Rechargeable, dimmable and available in three light temperatures.

© Grain & Knot

Wide Brush 🇬🇧

Sophie Sellu hand-carves Grain & Knot’s household objects in southeast London. This walnut brush is 23.5 centimeters wide and costs £350, which means I would probably display it beautifully and clean with something else.

© Victorinox

Evoke Wood Damast 2026 🇨🇭

Victorinox is obviously no secret. But after relying on one of its classic knives with roughly 12,304 functions during our hiking trip this weekend, I checked the website and found this limited edition with a Damasteel blade and plane-tree wood handle. Only two functions. Very restrained by Swiss Army knife standards.

© Roxy

Roxy Espresso Machine 🇩🇪

Roxy is a compact espresso machine developed in Bavaria by engineer Flo and software developer Max. It gives you control over pressure, temperature, flow and pre-infusion, yet somehow only has two buttons. In one video, I watched it lower the pressure mid-shot so the water wouldn’t finish flowing before the 27-second mark. Basically, it tries to save your coffee while teaching you what went wrong. Okay, I’m digressing...

If you ever want to talk coffee, just reply. I’m always happy to share my thoughts on brewing methods, grinders, machines, and the rest of the rabbit hole.

Buonasera from the road back to Merano.

My dad turned 70 this week.

At the party, there was a quiz for the guests.

One question was: What shoes were my parents both wearing when they first met at university?

(Hint: Not Jordans. It was around 1980.)

(Not the OG shoes from the 80s, but pretty close)

Correct answer: the negative heel Kalsø Earth Shoes (basically footwear equivalent of homemade muesli ;)

What I liked about the shoe story was that it had stuck around for more than 40 years.

The older my parents get, the more their taste seems to live in small things: what they kept, what they never replaced, the habits that somehow survived every new trend.

None of it was planned as a personal style, it just became one.

That’s roughly the bar for this newsletter: things worth keeping long enough to become part of the story.

105 weeks in, every product still passes through the same highly scientific filter: me.

I asked AI to choose them once, on a tired night. The suggestions weren’t bad.

They were just wrong.

I couldn’t have told you exactly why. I just knew I wouldn’t send them.

That’s probably the taste.

I use AI plenty. Claude Code built the map and my current websites. AI builds the shelves.

But it doesn’t decide what belongs on them.

The internet has enough lists nobody really chose. What’s rarer is someone saying this one, not that one, and putting their name to it.

So: five things picked by hand.

—

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 Origami foldable bottle made by Difold that lets you pedal to support the battery was the most-clicked item.

© Tentsile

Safari Trillium XL hammock 🇬🇧

Tentsile’s Safari Trillium XL stretches between three trees and holds six adults, ten kids or 550 kg of people who trust ratchets more than I do. Made from heavy-duty Dacron with a hatch in the middle. Basically a treehouse floor without the house.

© Flexform

Eri armchair 🇮🇹

Designed by Fumie Shibata for Flexform, the Eri armchair borrows its curves from a tailored jacket lapel. A very well-dressed place to sit.

© Mustard Made

The Collector cabinet 🇬🇧

Mustard Made’s The Collector is a 170 cm olive cabinet with fluted glass and four adjustable shelves. Enough blur to make even the shelf of mystery cables look curated.

© Oblure

Arch Straight pendant lamp 🇸🇪

Designed by Johan Lindstén and Markus Johansson for Swedish lighting brand Oblure, Arch Straight hangs seven bulbs beneath a row of steel arches. A Roman aqueduct for the dining table, minus the plumbing.

© 91-92

Just in Case cigarette case 🇩🇰

Copenhagen studio 91-92 made Just in Case for exactly two cigarettes, plus a tiny pocket for gum. Part of their outdoor life ideas for summer 2026.

Buonasera from Merano.

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.

—

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

Flat Pinch large knob/hook 🇭🇺

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.

© DiFOLD

Origami Bottle V2 🇧🇬

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

Money Sssaver Lava 🇮🇹

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.

© insalata mista

GIOIA jewellery box 🇮🇹

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

Sardines “Royale” 🇦🇹 🇪🇸

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.

Buonasera from Merano.

My kids still think I’m one of the coolest people. (For now.)

I was reminded of that again today when I went to the cinema with my son to watch The Mandalorian. He still wants me next to him. Still wants the shared snacks. Still wants the whispered commentary.

I know that won’t always be true.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about time, work, family, and the problem of living a perfectly reasonable life that has started to feel a little too tight around the edges.

I wrote a longer piece about it this week, inspired by Paul Millerd’s The Pathless Path.

You can read it here.

Anyway.

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 French suitcase that turns into a mobile desk or wardrobe from Chapoget was the most-clicked item.

© Kolelinia

Halfbike standing bike 🇧🇬

There is a tragic shortage of smaller European countries in this newsletter. Not because they don’t make great things, but because they’re harder to stumble across when your research process is basically 43 open tabs and mild concern.

So I’m always very happy when readers send me suggestions. Recently, Gergana from Bulgaria wrote with a few ideas, and together we dug around for products I’ll share over the next weeks. First up: Halfbike.

Three wheels, no saddle. You ride it standing up, steer with your body weight, and pedal in a motion closer to running than cycling. Built by Kolelinia in Sofia and assembled one at a time. It folds down, weighs 9.5 kg, and probably takes a few sessions before you stop looking like a confused flamingo in activewear.

© Bless

BLESS N°26 Cable Jewelry Multiplug 🇫🇷

BLESS is the hard-to-place design duo of Désirée Heiss and Ines Kaag, with roots somewhere between Paris, Berlin, fashion, furniture, art, and “wait, is this genius or am I being tricked?” Their N°26 Cable Jewelry Multiplug has three outlets, a 1.4 m black cord, and wooden beads running along the length of it. It hides nothing. That’s the whole point.

© MOWO / anteup

Aera Curve bench 🇦🇹

Made by Vienna’s MOWO Studio in collaboration with design studio ante up, Aera Curve consists of two curved elements. Place them one way and they form an arc. Flip them around and they become a wave. The seat is made from woven molded beech plywood that flexes under weight.

© Serax / Annebet Philips

Annebet Philips Carte Blanche tea pot 🇳🇱

Amsterdam-based designer Annebet Philips first made the Carte Blanche teapot from cardboard. When Serax put it into porcelain production, the fold lines stayed. So did the slightly sketch-like black details. It looks like a drawing that escaped the notebook. Better on the table than hidden in the cupboard, obviously.

© Twike

TWIKE 5 electric vehicle 🇩🇪

The TWIKE 5 has three wheels, two seats, and pedals that feed power back into the battery while you drive. TWIKE has been chasing this very specific future since 1986, which I respect deeply. The top version reaches up to 190 km/h and more than 600 km of range, according to TWIKE’s own asterisks. It can also push power back to the grid.

Buonasera from Merano.

This week starts with a broken blender.

Not mine, unfortunately. That would have made the story more cinematic.

The founders of Open Funk once took a broken blender to a repair shop and were quoted €50 just to have someone look at it.

Annoying. But also useful, because it led them to build re:Mix: a blender made in Berlin, designed to be opened, repaired, upgraded and not thrown away the moment one small part gives up.

I like that.

And maybe this is one of the more underrated things about European product culture. At its best, it still has a soft spot for objects that stay around. Things with screws. Things made by people who assume the owner is not an idiot.

Europe even tries to force this idea onto big tech sometimes.

Mixed results, obviously. But I like the instinct: make things that can be opened, fixed, understood and kept.

Which does not mean Europe always gets this right.

Europe is also perfectly capable of producing objects that die after 19 months and then look at you like: “good luck, peasant.”

Anyway, this week’s five products: a repairable blender, a handmade Croatian mirror, an open-source pollution sensor, a glowing mineral lamp and a French suitcase that turns into a mobile desk.

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 caféracer bike from Achielle Belgium was the most-clicked design.

© Glassy_Fabio

Glassy Fabio 005 Mirror 🇭🇷

Fabijan, aka Glassy Fabio, makes handmade stained glass mirrors in Croatia. His mirrors have colourful glasswork and look calm, sculptural and very much not from the algorithm. No website found, just Instagram and DMs (but 005 is still available).

© Fab Lab Barcelona

Fab Lab Barcelona Smart Citizen Kit 🇪🇸

Designed by Fab Lab Barcelona, a workshop and research lab for digital design, the Smart Citizen Kit is an open-source sensor for measuring air quality, noise, temperature and humidity. Mount it somewhere, connect it, and your local data joins a public platform with readings from other kits around the world. A small civic tool for people who prefer knowing things themselves.

© Open Funk

Open Funk re:Mix Kitchen Blender 🇩🇪

Open Funk was founded by Ken Rostand and Paul Anca after a repair shop quoted them €50 just to look at a broken blender. re:Mix is their repairable kitchen blender, handcrafted in Berlin, made for normal glass jars and built with a 100% recycled plastic casing.

© KAIA Editions

KAIA Editions Torch Table Portable 🇬🇧

Designed by French architect Sophie Dries, KAIA’s Torch Table Portable is made from a solid block of gypsum selenite, so the mineral itself gives off the glow. Headquartered in London, handmade in Germany, with a burned steel column, rechargeable battery and 6–8 week lead time.

© Chapoget

Chapoget Cabin Trunk 🇫🇷

Founded by Thomas Chaperot, Pascal Nuzzo and Lenny Kessler, Chapoget makes a cabin trunk from French-grown linen composite: lightweight, shock-resistant, recyclable and repairable. It turns into a mobile desk or wardrobe, and is currently on pre-order for summer 2026 delivery.

Buonasera from Merano.

You might notice that this edition looks slightly different.

I’ve been changing a few things in the newsletter design over the last weeks. Mostly small layout tweaks that I hope make it nicer to read, and bring it a little closer to how I imagine From Europe with Love should feel.

Some parts already work.

Some parts may still need a bit of love.

I’m trying not to wait until everything is perfect, because that usually means waiting forever. So I’ll keep improving it bit by bit while still sending the newsletter every Sunday.

A small renovation while the café stays open.

Anyway.

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 bedside clock from habity design was the most-clicked product.

© Achielle Bikes

Achielle Omer Caféracer 🇧🇪

Achielle is a Belgian bicycle maker with the nice kind of old-school seriousness. The Omer is their Caféracer model: handmade frame, classic lines, and exactly the kind of bike you ride to get coffee, bread and one admiring look from a retired architect. Very dignified errand energy.

© Moccamaster

Moccamaster KBG Select 🇳🇱

This is not new. Not rare. Not a secret brand discovered in a side street in Antwerp. But the Moccamaster belongs here anyway (and to the map). Handmade in the Netherlands by Technivorm, around since the late 1960s, and still one of the nicest ways to make filter coffee without turning your kitchen into a small chemistry lab. Mine is constantly in use at home. There’s also one in the holiday apartment. That’s probably the most honest endorsement I can give before coffee.

© Maria Stefanescu

Maria Stefanescu Horezu Plates 🇷🇴

Horezu ceramics are one of Romania’s great craft traditions, and Maria Stefanescu’s plates have that warm handmade look where every small imperfection makes the piece better. Folk, alive, and very far from “rustic farmhouse Pinterest wall”.

© increment labs

Increment Lab Light Meter Watch LMW-V1 🇬🇧

A watch with a built-in light meter. That’s it. That’s the idea. The LMW-V1 by Increment Lab is made for photographers who shoot film or use manual cameras. It measures light from your wrist, looks like a proper little tool, and saves you from carrying yet another black plastic gadget. Is this for everyone? Absolutely not.

© EMKO

EMKO Bunny Lounge Chair 🇱🇹

This brand was recommended by a reader: EMKO from Lithuania makes furniture with materials sourced from Europe only, which is already a nice start. Then they went and made a lounge chair with ears. The Bunny Chair was designed by architecture studio inblum and somehow manages to be playful without looking like it escaped from a children’s dentist waiting room.

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👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.

👋 Say hello on Linkedin or follow on Instagram. Or just reply here. I read every mail.