boxwood corkscrew
There’s a corkscrew in every home. There are corkscrews of many different models, systems and appearances, but the one which fascinates us is the double-lever corkscrew which David Olañeta designed in 1932. In all of our houses there’s an industrially designed device like that which is indispensable but which has become almost invisible, something like a can-opener or a nut-cracker. In Eibar in 1905, Manuel Barrenetxea, Bernardo Olañeta and Vicente Juaristi founded a company known as Boj (the Spanish word for ‘boxwood’), and the firm carries on creating and producing many products connected with wine. Nowadays it’s the third generation which is running the company and they sell their products in more than 31 countries. And, right now, we’re all familiar with that weird, beautiful, ergonomic corkscrew which looks like an owl. Note: Okay. We know that the word “corkscrew” doesn’t exist in Basque. So we’ve come up with a word (taken from French more or less) because “cork-extracting device”, “top-removing device” and words like “screw of the cork” seem wholly artificial in Basque and, what the hell, we have the right to come up with new words. If that’s not right, let the Basque Language Police come and get us and take us to an indoctrination centre.
