Rex Peeler

The Rex is a vegetable peeler made from a single strip of aluminium, pressed and bent into an open loop that forms the handle and rises at the front into two short arms. Between the arms a narrow steel blade pivots on a pin, set across the line of the handle like the head of a safety razor, with a small hooked tip at one end for lifting out the eyes of potatoes. A round bar beneath the blade braces the frame. The whole object weighs fourteen grams.

Its inventor, Alfred Neweczerzal, was born in Davos. The Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich dates his work on the design from 1936 and the start of production from 1947, the year he patented it. A peeler with a swivelling blade mounted crosswise was new: earlier peelers, such as the German Famos, carried their blades along the handle. The firm that would make the Rex, Zena, was founded at Affoltern am Albis, outside Zürich, in 1948.

The design suited small-scale manufacture. Swissinfo describes the original as made from a single piece of aluminium, simple to produce and cheap to buy, yet of high quality, and because the blade lies across the handle the same peeler serves right and left hands alike. Zena turned it out by the million and exported two thirds of them. In Switzerland it became the ordinary peeler of the household drawer, and it has since entered the design collection of the Zürich museum and appeared on a Swiss postage stamp in a series of Swiss design classics.

In 2020 Victorinox, the maker of the Swiss Army knife, bought Zena, and the Rex now carries its name. The aluminium handle and crosswise blade are unchanged, and the dimensions Victorinox gives match those of the museum's examples. Crosswise swivel peelers are now made everywhere, by many firms and in every material; this is the one they descend from, still pressed in Switzerland and still sold for a few pounds.