o.k.-international was founded in 1997 as o.k.-Versand by Lukas Plum. He opened his first shop in Cologne in 1998 and a second in Berlin in 2001. At o.k.-international you can find everyday objects that Lukas Plum has found abroad (e.g. in Cambodia, Turkmenistan or Togo). Last time I was there, for example, I bought an owl-shaped buffer for textiles (not quite sure where it came from, I should have asked).

When I go to o.k.-international, I feel like I’m going back to my childhood, because I can find many toys that I used to play with at my grandparents’ house in the Belgian province of Hainaut in the nineties. Which is hard to explain, as all o.k.-international items are originally produced for their local markets, and none of these markets seem to be in Central Europe – the mystery continues…

Check out the o.k.-international website, where you can shop online and be informed about the latest arrivals (e.g. enamel from Turkey or Ukraine).