Secrid Cardprotector

The Cardprotector is a stiff little box of anodised aluminium, only a little bigger than the cards it holds, open at one end. It holds six cards, or four with raised lettering. At the closed end is a small lever. Push it with a thumb and the cards rise out of the open end in a staggered fan, each one far enough proud of the next to be picked out with two fingers. Let go and they slide back. There is no leather, no stitching, no clasp and nothing to unfold or open.

Its makers are a Dutch couple, René van Geer, an industrial designer, and Marianne van Sasse van Ysselt, who trained in fashion. They met as teenagers in 1979 and from 1990 ran a design studio in the Netherlands. In 1995, as electronic payment began to replace cash, they made themselves a minimal wallet they called the Bodycard, and the idea stayed with them through years of work for other people's products.

When the financial crisis of 2008 took away their clients, they made it their business. The Cardprotector was launched in 2009, built around a patented slide mechanism, and made in the Netherlands at a time when, the company says, the Dutch leather industry had almost entirely moved abroad. The aluminium case stops cards bending or breaking, and it also blocks the radio signals that contactless cards answer to.

The Cardprotector is by some distance the youngest object in this section. It has become the core of Secrid's range, wrapped in leather for the company's later wallets, and is sold in many colours and finishes, from plain powder-coated grey to fluted and hammered metal. Its makers still own and run the company with their children. The plain version is unchanged: an aluminium box, a lever and six cards.