Nos Store Beautiful and functional objects for everyday life

Beautiful or functional? Emily Pelich wants both. Because everyday objects for cooking, eating, and household often only fulfil one thing, she opened the Nōs store in Berlin-Schöneberg, a concept store for functional but equally beautiful everyday objects.

The egg cup, creamy white with a few brown speckles, the teapot, bulbous in pastel yellow and black, or the cachepot, emerald green and glazed - each piece has a clear function.

The former is to prevent a boiled egg from rolling away, the latter to hold tea and the third to encase a flower pot. Extremely practical kitchen and household helpers, as we all know and use them.

But what is inherent in these three, and indeed in every product that Emily Pelich has curated for her Nōs Store in Berlin-Schöneberg, is much more and also appeals to the aesthetic. Her "functional stuff for everyday life", as she calls it, is not only practical but also simple and beautiful, traditionally made and thus durable and sustainable.

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It's funny that in this country, the combination of utility and design is something so special and requires such wonderful shops as the Nōs Store. The design scene in Australia, for example, realised this a long time ago and, we don't have to look so far away, the designers in Scandinavia, especially in Finland, can't help but think of the people who use it every day when they design tableware, glasses and the like.

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So now it is Berlin. "The name 'nōs', which comes from Latin, means 'we', because we see ourselves as part of a community of producers, traders and customers who share our values," says Emily Pelich. They are the people who love and understand their craft, alongside family businesses that pass on their knowledge from generation to generation, small and large manufactories that focus on style instead of trends, and self-taught people who have become experts because of their passion.

Therefore, the question of whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first is irrelevant for Emily Pelich. Both belong together and are of equal value. And that is also the aura surrounding you in the beautiful concept store: a gentle colour-harmonious world in which every product radiates a haptic attraction.

"It was clear to me that I didn't want to open another deco shop," the store owner recalls. It's not that she doesn't like decoration, but for her it should have a story, just like the souvenirs she brings back from her travels for her own four walls. The beautiful everyday items she has been selling since May 2020 - when the shop opened shortly after the first lockdown - are also ideal gifts. Not that you need more plates or glasses. But handmade plates from Portugal, a country with a very long ceramic tradition, or a descendant of the "tumbler" from northern France, known as a typical bistro glass? That simply perfects one's own stock.

Housewares, cooking utensils, crockery, and drinking glasses are only part of the assortment in the Nōs Store. There is everything for the kitchen and household, plus a selection for the bathroom, table linen and cushions. And on-tops. Tableware becomes complete when a cookbook is included, wine glasses when there is a good bottle of wine - Emily Pelich also offers these with grape juices from the Palatinate.

One of the latest products is the melting light, a, as she says, "wonderful solution against wasting raw materials". The "wax eater" is a small clay pot into which you throw leftover candle wax, creating a new candle thanks to the wick made of long-lasting glass fibres.

Because summer is also picnic time, there are picnic blankets from France with a carrying strap, an XXL option for the whole family, and the matching picnic basket made in Europe under fair conditions. The beautiful Nōs porcelain could, of course, be transported in it, and it would make the picnic all the more elegant. But then, says the practical aesthete, it could also be purely functional and unbreakable plastic tableware.

Manuela Blisse

Author Berlin