Robbe & Berking Table accessories - from Alt Faden to Sphinx

As with the cutleries of the

silver manufacture Robbe Berking the enterprise offers the table accessories in silver mostly in 925 sterling silver. The range can be divided into three groups: here in addition to the cutleries we find underplates, glass coasters and napkin rings of silver which are tuned perfectly to the design of the respective cutlery. Furthermore Robbe Berking makes - together with famous designers as for example Wilfried Moll - a whole series of unusual table accessories which offers unequalled opportunities. Their names also based on the known cutleries of the manufacture. We are especially proud to present the series Neue Form, a play from spherical and bulbous forms which can be produced exclusively in sterling silver. This coffee- and tea service, which encloses the sugar bowl and the creamer as well as a tray also beside the teapots and coffee-pots, stands in the forefront of the nicest objects which were designed in this silver genre. The shape is framed by braces connecting the spout, the lid and the clutch. The clutch and the button of Grenadilla wood forms the end, an extremely hard tropical wood which is used, otherwise, only in the music instrument making.

The series Alta designed in the

Bauhaus style which encloses all only conceivable parts in table accessories is extremely far-reaching: Pots and trays, candlesticks and tureens, underplates and rechauds. Completely in contrast to the series Neue Form all parts of this series are based on a strict cylindrical basic form which is rounded in the edges softly. The objects of this series are distinguished with a place in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art. The objects of the series Sphinx also belong to the contemporary silver of Robbe Berking, in which candelabras and candle holders set the tone as like as a whole series of smaller pots – for mocha or as a hot drink pot or chocolate pot. The quite traditional objects should not least be mentioned like Alt Augsburg or Kordelrand, made in sterling silver. With the love to the detail - so typical for Robbe and Berking, these apparently so well known forms are an absolutely new discovery.

Independent of the fact which

style you prefer: Table silver of the manufacture Robbe & Berking entices to more silver on your well-laid table .

Prestigiously and generously,

however, with a lot of love and attention for the details. So products of Robbe & Berking can be described probably the best. At various five-star hotels, in the Moscow Kremlin as well as on the cruise liner MS Deutschland one is dining with cutlery of the manufacture from Flensburg. Robbe & Berking has become a synonym for perfect sterling silver cutlery. To all products of Robbe & Berking is common, the apparently endless patience which is dedicated to the details. No matter whether it concerns a silvered mocha spoon or a big candelabrum.

Robbe & Berking is a manufacture

in the original sense: Everything is produced in time-consuming manual labour. For example, for manufacturing a single cutlery part only are necessary up to 40 different operations. And most operations are as executed today, even as they were necessary 140 years ago at the time of the foundation of the company.
The company was founded by Nicholas Christoph Robbe in 1874. He was a gold- and silversmith and worked first in a small workshop in which he offered repair and engravings. Today nobody would probably remember this small business in Flensburg, if Robert Berking had not joined the business and gave the company impetus with his idea to produce cutleries by the end of 19th century. The company Robbe & Berking soon sold his cutleries till then far away Hamburg. The company blossomed and marketed cutleries of the manufacture primarily with jewellers and soon one dozen employees was nourished. During the postwar years in the sixties Robbe & Berking found out a new blossom. Sketched by Robert Berking, quite new modern and the spirit of the times suitable cutlery models were produced of silver. Today many of these are still liked and you find this even today explained on these sides under the column vintage series. Robbe and Berking still stuck to his tradition of the cutlery production and got on as a handicraft business, as a manufacture. Since in 1990ies the profile of the brand has changed once more and there came out the models which should stamp the appearance of the brand: Alta and later Riva. You recognize particularly by the last-mentioned clearly the development of a new creation with Robbe & Berking.

At the beginning stands the design,

worked out primarily as a sample by the master craftsmen and later in the production – without compromises. No design is falsified, only because the production probably is a little more complicated. And that is the reason we hold with every piece of silver of Robbe & Berking precisely the idea of the designer in our hands. The history of Robbe & Berking during the past 80 years has made the company the world market leader in cutleries from sterling to silver.
Twenty tons of this highly noble material is processed per year by 170 employees. One recognises that all cutlery models are available mainly in sterling silver, however, but also in addition a less expensive silvered variation of the patterns can be delivered. The silvered cutlery is produced on a core of German silver, an alloy of nickel, copper and zinc. This core allows working out the details similar precisely like on the soft sterling silver. One of the latest models with the cutleries is the cutlery Sphinx. Sphinx leans upon the tradition of the cutleries in the German Bauhaus style of the 40ies by Robbe & Berking. Sign of this cutlery is 90 ° corner in the crossing of the style to the bowl which gives a striking appearance to this representative cutlery. The appearance of this cutlery is complemented with a so-called German knife blade with a distinctive back. Excellently reveals itself in this draught that with Robbe & Berking every pattern has an individual knife blade, every cutlery differs also in the form of the fork prongs and the bowls. A different cutlery model is not only a different handle.

For ambitious demands are Robbe

& Berking offeres table accessories and hollowware, some of it - like the tableware series Alta - are issued as design examples in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The lines of these teapots, tureens and platters of Alta lean upon the maxim of Dessauer Bauhaus and are available in sterling silver as well as in silver plated. For us the nicest coffee service in silver of the today's time is the Neue Form: Made in sterling silver the design fascinates by softy, however, absolutely clear lines. In the centre of this design stands the bulbous or spherical basic form, complements with braces which connect clutch, lid and spout of the pot. The buttons and clutches made in Grenadille wood, an extremely hard tropical wood which we know from the instrument making, for example, from clarinets. Neue Form is an uncompromising design, and we recognize, as usual, with Robbe & Berking, the pursued expenditure in detail.
Robbe & Berking has become with his company philosophy the synonym for silver cutlery from Germany in indisputable quality. Exclusively made in own Flensburger workshops, the cutlery of the family enterprise Robbe & Berking is unparalleled in quality and design.

silverplated

Silvered objects do not differ optically from massively silver ones. The silver plating is a galvanised surface which is applied on a core from base material like steel, alpaca (German silver) or bronze. Steel is used especially for cutlery from great serial productions which can be produced cost-efficient. We find bronze particularly with candelabras and hollowware, while German silver with high-quality silver plated cutlery. Alpaca is an alloy of copper (Cu), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn) and with his qualities similar to pure silver (Ag). Luxurious decors can be exact executed with this base material. The surface is galvanised with silver which quality is given in gramme per 12 table forks and table spoons - which are accepted with 24 dm². Then there occur names as 90, 100, 150, 180, with or without other additions. This designation mainly is use in Germany, objects of other origin have another - or none - name of the silver layer.

Hallmark Silverplated Robbe & Berking