The other day we noticed that a design concept store we really enjoy was doing a collaboration with our downstairs neighbours, Baldon, so we thought it would be nice to share it with all of you. Their name is analograum and they offer an elegantly curated selection of goods that emote a “minimalistic vision of living”. So we caught up with analograum’s founder and curator Franziska Wernicke for a coffee earlier to hear more about the philosophy behind the store and how it all came to be.
By trade, Franziska is a textile and surface designer, having initially studied in her hometown of Berlin before finishing her formal education in Amsterdam and founding a studio in the Netherlands. But then, home was calling, and she decided to move her life back to her roots in Berlin, where she worked with architecture firms and interior architects consulting on carpet solutions.
After a while though, she felt it was time for change. She decided to take things in a fresh direction with a venture that could incorporate her all-encompassing interest in interiors and architecture alongside her talents in consultancy and inspiring people’s tastes.
“I always loved the whole picture... of how objects connect to each other within the interior and architectural surroundings.”
So in 2016, she founded analograum. Her philosophy was that “it’s not important which label it is, or which brand, it’s more about the object itself and its communication to the other objects and products... So it’s this kind of analogy within those products between form, shape, colour and functionality that fascinates me.”
And this significance of the way objects relate to each other is at the core of Franziska’s vision of curation.
“The analograum is a very personal but also universal vision of timeless and minimalistic living. A conscious and slow approach.”
Franziska doesn’t plan out a rigid structure of which types of products she needs to locate or what’s in demand or ‘trending’ right now, but rather her curation is based on feeling and vision.
“It’s not that I say ‘oh, I need a lamp’... I might see something [in a collection] and maybe that’s the only product from the whole collection which attracted me and so I only pick that… It’s not a ‘big selling’ approach - I’m not interested in that. More important to me is a strong and timeless selection, with products persevering beyond seasonal trends and style changes.”
And under this same philosophy of prioritising vision over business, Franziska decided that rather than shackle herself to the financial pressures of paying rent on a permanent retail store, she would opt for the freedom of using only temporary spaces.
“I decided against a [fixed] shop in the beginning. I didn’t want to lose my creativity by having to pay a high permanent rent so I decided to do it in a different way and just do temporary stores twice a year. Having it combined with an online shop works pretty well.”
And more importantly even than the retail space is analograum as an interior studio for consultancy, “My next step is to officially launch the analograum studio in order to offer customised interior consultancy to a wide spectrum of clients.”
You can find some of Franziska’s exquisitely curated objects at Baldon from now until the end of December. Or if you’re not in Berlin, you can always jump online to her web store at the link below.
Thank you to Franziska.
