The Plush Sausages at Berlin’s Textile Butcher Shop Look Good Enough to Eat

Forget vegan butcher shops. An artist in Germany has created her own vegetarian-friendly meat oasis. Sylvia Wald is the owner of Aufschnitt Berlin, marketed as "the world's first textile butcher shop." In her store, customers find a wide array of sausages, primal cuts, organ meats, and baked goods made from fabric and displayed to look like they're part of a real butcher counter.

According to Ignant, Wald has a background in fashion and after working in clothing engineering, decided to return to her passion: pattern making. The name, which translates to "cold sliced meats," is a play on word. "I don't eat meat — I'm a vegetarian. This paradox reveals my sense of humor — I work with something I actually don't like."

Wald says the displays are realistic enough that occasionally passersby mistake her textile butcher shop for the real thing. The deli features pepper salami that's made with fabric and netting from a real butcher shop. Customers' purchases are also wrapped in brown butcher paper. "The product plays with humor, perception, culture, the ‘Zeitgeist', texture, abstraction, and with fantasy — the imitation disappoints," she says. In addition to pillows, the shop also sells key chains, neck pillows, and beanbag chairs. "I find it so striking that you can you take a piece of fabric and it can become a sausage."

Of course, Wald isn't the first artist to draw inspiration from food. A man in Australia has built up an Instagram following for wearing hats knit into the shapes of popular foods. Other designers have incidentally taken cues from the food world, such as the makers of the Blandito —€” a chair that will fold you into a cozy taco.