There are an astonishing number of people who own a Victorinox without being able to say exactly how long they've had it.
It was just there at some point.
In a jacket pocket.
In the glove compartment.
In the cellar that you had long wanted to clear out and where you were actually looking for something completely different.
And then it just stayed.
Perhaps because it never demanded much attention from its owner.
People lose keys, wallets - entire suitcases.
The Victorinox remains.
Not out of sentimentality.
But because it works.
It opens packages.
Pulls corks.
Shortens threads.
Removes paper clips from printers.
And solves small problems that weren't problems five seconds earlier.
Karl Elsener originally developed knives for the Swiss army at the end of the 19th century.
Not as a lifestyle product. Not as a design object. But as a tool.
The corkscrew, incidentally, was added later — probably because Swiss officers didn't exclusively want to drink water.
Swiss officers had problems with bottle openings, American soldiers more with the pronunciation.
According to tradition, they couldn't pronounce "Schweizer Offiziersmesser" very well. That's why it eventually became simply: "Swiss Army Knife".
After that, it got a bit confusing.
Today, the Victorinox is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is simultaneously found in an astonishing number of kitchen drawers with old batteries, rubber bands, and instruction manuals for long-disappeared devices.
Only a few objects achieve this breadth of societal integration.
This knife somehow survived over a hundred years of world history.
Two world wars. NASA missions. PowerPoint.
And probably several generations of poorly organized kitchen drawers.
My grandmother, by the way, too.
However, she didn't come from Switzerland, but from Silesia, and unlike the Victorinox, she wasn't involved in various NASA missions either. At least there are no official reports about that.
The Victorinox doesn't try to seem interesting. It doesn't stage a lifestyle.
It doesn't want to replace a personality or push itself into the foreground.
It's something that people carry with them for decades without ever having to formulate a precise relationship with it. It's just there.
When I think about it, the Victorinox and my grandmother had a lot in common.
— Nina Heim
Observations on objects, everyday life, and professional aesthetics.