The Peppermills of Jens Quistgaard

Wow, these are beautiful. My dad used to make these as a sort of hobby (he liked any excuse to hop on the lathe, and they made great gifts; you don't realize how awful the ones in big box stores are until someone makes you a proper one). He'll love to see this.

It didn't occur to me that there'd be such an extensive collection of something seemingly so obscure, yet here we are. It seems like this exists for everything out there.

It's very nostalgic in a way. Though my dad's were different, the dark, solid wood and geometric shapes bring me back to my childhood.

These are handsome, but my real question is: how's the mechanism? Of the half dozen or so pepper mills I've owned, half of them kind of sucked from the get-go (the current one grinds ok, but doesn't feed fresh peppercorns without a regular shake), and the other half broke in a couple years (the last one the adjustment mechanism jammed up). I don't feel like I'm an unreasonably aggressive pepper grinder, nor do I think I use an abnormally large amount of pepper. Hell, I'd only call myself a halfway decent home cook.

In related news: does anyone want to recommend a decent commercial, easily available option? Not looking to spend a fortune, but would be willing to spend enough to have one that'll last another 40-50 years.

https://web.archive.org/web/20241228230216/http://quistgaard...

Site wouldn't load for me, here's an archive version

But can they sing? https://teenage.engineering/products/choir

When the article said:

These peppermills, otherwise known as “table seasoners”, evoke tiny household sculptures, powerful individually, but most compelling when grouped and viewed in sets.

Is that some kind of direct translation from Danish, the "table seasoners" part? I'm certainly not a native speaker of English, but that was a term I've never heard before ... I tried googling it but didn't find much, which is why I ask.

The pepper grinders at the gift shoppe at Seattle's Space Needle are terrible. Someone like this designer needs to make a GOOD Space Needle pepper grinder with a good (Peugeot) mechanism!

(I recall a sombrero-roofed observation tower at the I-95 South of the Border rest stop/tourist trap in South Carolina called the Spice Needle)

It was sort of a thing for southern California machinists to start peppermill companies, or at least two. I have a vintage William Bounds one marked "made on the third planet from the sun" and I used to have an Olde Thompson I think.

As an avid fan of Star Control, I can't help but love the Druuge model, "His reference for this mill’s shape comes from similarly shaped alien ships in a video game called Star Control."

I clicked on the article on a lark, and I was stunned? certainly excited to see the "Acorn" model there: my father's had one of those for... well, as long as I can remember. Maybe near 50 years now?

Still beautiful in teak.

Gorgeous pepper mills. The website breaks the back button, however.

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