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e

Object Culture

Brilliant Butter Knife Re-design

By Rain Noe - August 18, 2014

From Australia comes this clever re-think of the common butter knife. Sydney-based industrial designers Sacha Pantschenko, Norman Oliveria and Craig Andrews put their heads together and came up with the ButterUp, which adds a row of precisely-shaped holes to the blunt edge of the blade. This enables one to "grate" a cold stick of butter, creating easier-to-spread ribbons:

It's not surprising that the ButterUp quickly reached (and tripled) its Kickstarter funding target, garnering AUD $126,213 at press time over a $38,000 goal; what is surprising is how badly, and quickly, people want this design. Rather than opt for the least-expensive, $12-per-unit buy-in with a March 2015 delivery date, nearly a hundred backers opted to pay $60 to have a single unit delivered by this September! These people take their toast seriously.

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

3 Comments

Andrew Scott

4 years ago

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1Z

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In most places in Australia during the warmer 6–9 months of the year there is nowhere outside the fridge that you can leave a tub of butter and not have it turn into a liquid. I own a couple of ButterUps and they work so well I can now use butter instead of margarine.

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Solomon Choi

4 years ago

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Nice for people who leave a stick of butter in the fridge. I too use chesse plane for some thin slice of butter on hot toast. However, Leaving a can of butter in a cool place outside of the fridge will also solve this firatfirst world problem.

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Toby

5 years ago

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Reply

Clever - it's a cheese plane, for butter. I wonder if just using a single slot (like a plane) was more expensive to manufacture, and not any more practical. It also suggests that with sharper holes you could grate cheese with a similar tool, like a mini-grater.
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