CORINNA GRONAUFounder of TRIXI GRONAU in Hamburg

I am asked again and again: so you are Trixi? No. I am Corinna.

Trixi is my sister. When we opened the shop in 1995 there were four family names on the table, and Trixi Gronau was the one people remember. I wrote the whole story down in my journal, in German.

This page is about how I got there. The way leads through a printing works, through early travel, through a few years in catering and across a great many trade fairs. All of it is still in the things on our shelves.

Growing up with print and bookbinding

Paper was not a material at our house. Paper was everyday life.

My parents Rolf and Elsbeth Gronau set up Druck-Verlag Gronau in 1963, a printing works with its own bindery, close to the Michel in Hamburg. They ran it for more than forty years. My father had trained as a typesetter, my mother as a bookbinder.

I grew up among type cases, platen presses and glue pots. At home we discussed paper weights the way other families discuss the weather. Folding, stitching, binding, setting up a die for an emboss: I did not learn any of it on purpose. It was simply there.

That is exactly where the things that matter at TRIXI GRONAU come from. A notebook has to sit well in the hand. An emboss has to bite deep enough without buckling the sheet. Leather and paper belong together. My two daughters grew up in the printing works as well, and in their younger years they helped me there often. Both have careers of their own now and still lend a hand when their time allows. The printing works has been part of our family for three generations.

Metal and wood type, locked up in the chase.

Covers in the bindery.

Travel, discovery and the restaurant trade

Being on the road was normal for us from early on.

My father played football professionally. He played in the Oberliga Nord for SC Victoria Hamburg and SC Concordia Hamburg, back when the Bundesliga did not yet exist, and later in Switzerland for Nordstern Basel and Grasshopper Club Zürich. That is why I spent a few of my earliest years living in Zurich. His career is documented in an entry on Rolf Gronau in the German Wikipedia.

We also ate out a great deal. As a child I learned what a room feels like when the service is right, and how quickly a beautiful restaurant falls apart when it is not. That is where my eye for tables comes from, for glassware, for napkins, for the moment somebody walks in and immediately feels at ease.

Later I did it myself. I ran a catering business and a croque shop on Großneumarkt in Hamburg. I took lessons with Michelin-starred chefs, and as a young woman I did a cocktail course in a bar on the same square. For a few years the kitchen was my trade.

Which is why the restaurant pieces in my journal are not a side project. They belong to the same road.

From IFFA to Ambiente, from SIAL to Maison & Objet

The subject has changed. The curiosity has not.

I have been going to trade fairs for as long as I have been working. It used to be food, kitchens and catering supplies. Now it is design, table culture, stationery and accessories. The halls are the same, the cities are the same. Only what I am looking for has changed.

Paris has since added a handful of design and fashion fairs to the list. What I look for there never changes: people who make things themselves, and material you want to pick up. Almost everything you find with us, I held in my hands at a fair first.

TRIXI GRONAU since 1995

A corner shop in Winterhude, and thirty years later a house in Lokstedt.

The first TRIXI GRONAU concept store opened in 1995 at Poelchaukamp 23 in Hamburg-Winterhude, a short walk from my parents’ printing works. In June 2025 we moved to Hamburg-Lokstedt, to Bullenredder 19. The showroom is there today, and so is the manufactory.

That the shop would carry the name Gronau was never in question. In Hamburg the name was anchored twice over: through my father, and through my parents’ printing house. The only argument was about the first name in front of it.

• 1963My parents found Druck-Verlag Gronau in Hamburg, a printing works with its own bindery.
• 1995I open the first TRIXI GRONAU concept store at Poelchaukamp in Hamburg-Winterhude.
• June 2025The move to Hamburg-Lokstedt, Bullenredder 19. Showroom and manufactory under one roof.

Our own manufactory in Hamburg

What my parents could do, we carry on doing.

In our own manufactory we print, emboss and bind ourselves. Letterpress on the platen press, hot foil in gold, silver and colour, blind embossing without any ink at all, relief printing, screen printing and bookbinding.

That is what lets us make things personal: initials on a leather case, a name on a notebook, a monogram on a folder. For anything larger, a guest book, a wedding suite, a run for a company, the best place to start is the printing studio.

LetterpressGold on black, set by hand and printed on the platen press.

EmbossingInitials in silver on a notebook, positioned by hand.

MaterialsCover materials for bindings, chosen by colour.

Chosen in person, bought in person

More than 1,500 selected products. I picked every one of them myself.

There is no buying from a catalogue here, and no range handed down to us from anyone. I go to the fairs, I talk to the makers, I pick things up. If I would not use it myself or give it to someone, it does not go on the shelf.

It also means we stock names hardly anyone else carries, and that some things exist in very small numbers. Corinna’s Edit shows what has my attention at the moment.

WritingFountain pens, mechanical pencils, notebooks, paper.

AccessoriesBags, reading glasses, scarves, jewellery.

LivingScented candles, light, table culture, napkins.

Corinna Gronau in brief