Jun 3

Jun 3 ANDREAS IN PURSUIT OF THE PIE LIFTER

If you really love cakes and pies and would want to eat a slice every day of the year, but the thought of using the same pie lifter each time seems a little basic, and in an ideal world each slice would have its own, aesthetically pleasing serving tool, you should totally visit Andreas Maria Schäfer in Marburg — who is somehow living your dream. In 1984, during a household clearance sale, he found a pie lifter made of porcelain: a rare occurrence. And so, at first, he was content serving up cake with his rainbow pattern pie lifter, until a friend gifted him another specimen and he realised there might be a whole world of them out there. Now, porcelain pie lifters are, in fact, quite rare, but somehow Andreas managed to collect a whopping 370 of them over the next fourteen years. How he did it remains somewhat of a mystery. Flea market visits rarely brought what he sought, but friends helped out, sometimes family. People began to notice. Across Germany, porcelain dealers heard whispers of a kind of pie lifter gold rush. Prices rose to astronomical heights, and before long, it just wasn’t fun anymore. Although he had celebrated his fiftieth, his two-hundredth, with coffee and cake, there will never be a party for pie lifter number four-hundred. In 1998, Andreas lovingly wrapped all 370 pie slicers, carefully put them in eight boxes, and carried them up to his attic — where they have lived ever since.