Under the heading 'Designer programme', we have bracketed product ranges bearing the hallmark of a given designer. A product range generally consists of one or two lever handles, the attendant window handle plus doorknobs and door stops. Our European 'names' include:

the German Dieter Rams, whose striking handles so fully bear out his dictum that 'less is more'; the Englishman Jasper Morrison with his predilection for the unassuming, tangible and hefty; the Frenchman Philippe Starck, who proves that, even when designing the most commonplace of products, it is possible to infuse a strong personal touch without sacrificing functionality; the Dutchman Ton Haas, who feels that, above all, a Dutch handle needs to have bulk; the German husband-andwife designer duo rahe + rahe, who wished to gift the Bauhaus town of Dessau a handle of their own;

our colleague Hartmut Weise with his light and breezy stainless steel collection; the English architect Nicholas Grimshaw, who imparts styling common in the cutlery industry to his door handles; the Dane Erik Magnussen, who created a handle collection out of folded stainless steel strip that has the lightness of a Scandinavian gull’s wing-beat; the German architect Hans Kollhoff with his clean-lined handles that exude the spirit of the legendary 1930s. And our designers' hall of fame does not overlook the doyen of unsung industrial design, our very own Johannes Potente, either. You will find his classics both here in this work aid and in the permanent collection at the MoMA in New York.

On the subject of 'unsung inhouse designs', the most recent major creation of this sort by FSB was the product not of one but of 650 authors. Together, we have developed a range of fittings over the past few years that accords with the rules of the Golden Section.