WÜSTHOF Heritage Media

Published: 7 years ago

The art of cooking starts with chopping, slicing and dicing. Like an artist needs a fine paint brush, professional chefs and home cooks need a well-crafted knife.

In 1814, the town of Solingen Germany had a population of approximately 3,200 people with 16,000 in the surrounding areas. Of those people, 4,000 of them worked in grinding workshops. There were up to 120 workshops in the town, one of them was WÜSTHOF.

The land in Solingen is full of forests, steep-sided valleys and fast-flowing streams due to high levels of precipitation in the area. The streams and rivers were advantageous to the grinding workshops in the early 1800s. The power of the water in the river was used to drive grinding stones, hammers and mechanical equipment.

In 1938, Solingen became the only city in the world whose name is a registered trademark. According to the Solingen Decree, to mark a product with the name Solingen, all key manufacturing stages must have been processed and finished within Solingen, and the product must meet strict quality standards. This means that even cutlery manufactured entirely within Solingen’s town boundary may not be entitled to bear the name Solingen if it does not meet these required quality standards.

Over 200 years later, WÜSTHOF is still family owned and managed and creates a wide range of cutlery in Solingen, Germany. They are now one of the leading knife factories in the world with 112 robots and 360+ employees. With a proud tradition that spans 7 generations, the family-owned and managed company continues to uphold its simple mission to create the finest cutlery in the world.

WÜSTHOF’s best-selling collection for generations, the traditional CLASSIC line, goes through 40 manufacturing steps and is tempered to the optimum 58 degrees Rockwell. Within the CLASSIC line, there is knife for every job that will perform effortlessly when chopping, slicing or dicing.
sovrn