On the pages of our magazine we have already touched upon the knives that can be used not only for trivial food cutting. These gadgets rather resemble sculptor's chisels for a housewife to create her masterpiece from fruit and vegetables. Let us get you acquainted with another series of original knives helping Europeans both to decorate meals and to save time. A healthy economy stands on inventions and improvements of what has already been invented. Sometimes it happens so that a novelty item unfixes the notion of familiar things and may bring fame and money to a company that proposed it. This seems to be the case for the French company that invented a potato peeler in the last century, which is now well known not only to the French but over the world and which copes perfectly with other vegeta bles as well: marrows, aubergines, carrots etc. The most remarkable is the name of the brand under which the first knives appeared made by a French company (just common knives)  "Proven Umbrella" (Parapluie L'Epreuve).

This was the name that Thiers's Mr Vendelle chose on March 26th, 1819 for his new business  manu facturing and sales of kitchen and professional knives, which he eventually left to his descendants from the Therias family. The descendants cannot explain the association that connects the umbrella and the knife, though they have some guesses: may be it was heavily raining in Thiers that day and an umbrella was the first thing to come into mind of the unlucky ancestor. The explana tion is not the best one and does not clarify anything, however the mystery remains and it attracts extra attention to the company so this is quite a justified approach. In due course the com pany bought L'Unique Sabatier brand for professional knives and Rossignol for table and folding knives.

Gadget knives were branded as 'economic' (L'Econome). The rea son for that is not the sparing price of a handmade item (such knives cost from 30 to several hundred francs, where 70% of the cost is labour and only 30% material), but its saving ability. Just remember the fine peeling of potatoes that can be achieved with this knife. Soon after that other gadget knives appeared, for example, knives peeling off thin straps of lemon skin. French women were enthused about this peeler and started to decorate everything from biscuits to sal ads and fish jellies with a twist of lemon peel.

After that the inventors creat ed a knife to remove kernels from a solid apple, then a citrus peeler,  shell and scales removers. Soon their engineering genius turned to the esthetic side of invention and various gadgets to cut pota toes into balls, to slice carrots, cucumbers and fruit into round pieces with different individually shaped edges, to curl butter. Today more than 16 unconven tional types of knives of the L'Econome series are sold in Europe. The nowadays President of the company Pierre Therias has recently proposed another inno vation based on the principle: a new thing is a wellforgotten old thing. He decided to revive original national French knives, which existed earlier in different regions of France. Thus Masseu for Alsace, Berge for the Pyrenees, Alpin for the Alps appeared, totally 70 models. This idea again brought fame and wealth to the  Therias business. Honour to the inventors of knives!