R.A.M.P. - Your specialist for beach chairs in south afrika

The „Strandkorb“ – Beachchair in English –

was invented by the Rostock basket maker

Wilhelm Bartelmann in 1882.

An elderly aristocrat complained that while

doctors were telling her to take sea air, they were

also telling her not to sit on the sand because

of her rheumatism. How could she solve this

dilemma? Could Bartelmann make her a seat for the

beach that would protect her from too much sun and wind?

That was the birth of the Strandkorb.And so this is becoming the summer of

the “Strandkorb”, the wicker basket where you shelter from the winds while

watching the distant horizon, listening to sea gulls or your arguing neighbours.

It has become a cult object and an export hit for German craftsmen;

with its colourful flaps.

The seat caught on and by the beginning of the 20th century had become more sophisticated: with enough space for a couple, padded seating, an adjustable back, a

small table to place ones vacuum flask.

It is part of a German need for anchoring, for the illusion of permanence. Entering a Strandkorb on a blowy, sunny summer morning is like returning to the womb.

Above all, you have privacy and no privacy. The voices drift over from neighbouring “Strandkörbe” and you can catch the most intimate conversations because the shape of the basket, a little like a confessional booth, allows the two inhabitants to believe they

are alone in the world. You are isolated and out of view yet somehow in touch.