The Sippels came from Lüdensheid in Germany and settled in London by 1931.  The key family members were three brothers: Benno (1890-1946), Julius (1892-1950), and Wilhelm (1895-1950), who were sons of Peter and Lara nee Eckes. The timing suggests that the family fled the Nazis, though it is unclear if the Sippels were Jewish. Benno and Julius seem to have been attracted by business opportunities in the UK. They arrived in London with a mission: to introduce into England an innovative German method of mass producing plated spoons and forks by using heavy-duty presses, instead of traditional drop stamps. Partnered by the Celnik family (who later established Celnick & Power), the Sippels set up an engineering department in London and then invited manufacturers to witness the new technology. A firm in Sheffield (Cooper Bros) and another in Birmingham (Arthur Price) adopted the new presses and became market leaders in stainless flatware. Meanwhile, Benno and Julius established their own flatware company in Sheffield.  In 1933, they opened a works in Arundel Street. Samuel Celnik (1909-1991) became works manager.

Sippel’s expanded rapidly in Sheffield. By 1939, the Sippels had opened a factory at Cadman Street, where Sipelia Works was said to have the largest press plant for forks and spoons in the country.  It was claimed that the workforce had grown from about 75 in 1933, to 180 in 1937, and to 400 by 1939. A double-page spread in The Sheffield Telegraph & Independent Trade Supplement, 28 December 1939, was replete with photographs of the premises. The main location was Sipelia Works No 1 (Cadman Street), but further space was occupied at Sussex Street (for the warehouse and storerooms), and at Lumley Street.  The original Arundel Street office in the city centre was still open. Photographs showed the die sinking and pattern shop, the cross-rolling of flatware (the process after blanking), the electro-plating tanks, and a cargo boat on the adjacent waterway, which connected to the coast (and thence to Sippel’s overseas markets).  In 1939, most of the Sippel family – including Benno and Julius, and Benno’s daughter, Margarete (1919-1983) – lived at 30 Kenwood Park Road. At that address, too, was Kenneth Lovell Collin (1911-1997), who married Margarete in that year. He was a chartered accountant, who had been born at Kingston, Surrey. Wilhelm was also living in Sheffield and had become a Sippel director in 1937. He was associated with D. H. Farley, a nickel silver manufacturer in Union Lane, which was one of several outside companies linked with Sippel’s.

The outbreak of War initially checked this expansion. The Sippels were briefly interned, before being allowed to resume work at the company. Benno, the company’s managing director, became naturalised on 29 May 1946. The government had tried to attract Sippel to Bridgend in Wales to regenerate the mining community with a cutlery factory. This never materialised. Instead, Benno planned to open a factory at Maltby, which was another mining town near Rotherham. He was invited by the town councillors to meet local residents at the Church School and tell them how his proposed factory would benefit the town. At that meeting on 19 November 1946, Benno collapsed and died. He was aged 56 and left a widow, Elfriede, and two married daughters (Sheffield Telegraph, 20 November 1946). His estate was valued at £8,676.  A former member of the Lutheran Church in Germany, Benno had attended Carver Street Methodist Chapel. He was buried at Ecclesall churchyard. His brothers did not long survive him. Julius, of Bingham Park Crescent, died on 28 February 1950, leaving £6,769. Wilhelm died at his home in Lismore Road on 15 December 1950, aged 55. He was buried at Abbey Lane Cemetery.  He left £359.

In the 1950s, B. & J. Sippel Ltd continued to trade at Sipelia Works, though details about the firm are sketchy. No business records have survived. Benno’s daughter, Margarete Collin, became a director, and presumably she shared the controlling interest in the company with her husband, Ken. He played an increasing role in the business as a director. In 1951, he was also listed as a director of Lee & Wigfull (a Sippel subsidiary) at its John Street Works. 

The Collins attempted to recapture Sippel’s initial dynamism.  But it was never listed in Sheffield directories in the cutlery section. That was because it was a spoon and fork manufacturer, which relied on other Sheffield cutlers for its knives. (According to one undocumented source, G. W. Thornton was one supplier.) The firm produced flatware in volume, but remained a somewhat anonymous manufacturer. It eschewed the publicity campaigns favoured by the likes of Arthur Price Ltd and Viners. It had only a couple of trade marks: ‘SIPELIA’ on cutlery (registered in 1934) and ‘DURA-CROMA’, used on chromium plate and cutlery.  The firm’s occasional advertisements were dull and uninspiring. 

In the 1960s, Ken Collin, as the managing director, tried to combat the rising tide of imported cutlery by ambitiously expanding the company as The Sipelia Group.  He had a penchant for acquiring old Sheffield companies, which had usually been liquidated. These included (besides Farley and Wigfull):  Trustwell Bros Ltd, Osborne & Co (Sheffield) Ltd, Mosley (Rusnorstain Cutlery) Ltd, L. Harrison (Cutlers) Ltd, William Tay & Sons, British Tinning Galvanising & Casting Co, and R. Booth Ltd. These companies were either acquired for the name or for their machinery, which was sometimes installed at Sippel’s. The firm’s reputation as an employer was apparently mixed, with shift work and immigrant labour introduced to boost production (though some argued that quality suffered). 

Collin succeeded in making Sippel’s the biggest manufacturer of spoons and forks in Sheffield.  It was amongst the five largest cutlery firms in the city, with estimates of its workforce as high as 500.  But low-cost stainless steel cutlery was precisely the sector most vulnerable to imports from the Far East. Sippel’s struggled to make a profit and went out of business in 1972.  At the receiver’s sale, John Price (of Arthur Price Ltd) made a successful bid of £10,000 for all of Sippel’s presses and most of its tools and dies. All the creditors were paid, but Price noted that Margarete Collin was inconsolable. His verdict on her husband was characteristically pointed: ‘He had always claimed that his accountancy skills had kept the company alive and perhaps so it [sic] had. One thing that Ken Collin wasn’t was a cutler. That might have helped’ (J. Price, The Cutlers Tale, 1997).  Margarete died at Bakewell, Derbyshire, on 24 April 1983, leaving £22,070. Ken survived her until 10 October 1997.  A headstone for the Sippel and Collin families can be seen in Ecclesall churchyard.