In Alex Severin and Maren Lankford’s 18th ground, one bed room, Higher West Aspect condominium you’ll discover a grand piano, a cat named Dorian, and almost 50 pepper mills.
“They’re little wood sculptures,” Maren instructed me over Zoom, referencing the 2 floating cabinets in her backdrop, every lined end-to-end with their wood Dansk pepper mills—a set undoubtedly price hundreds.
“Out of context, you don’t have any concept what tip of what iceberg you’re seeing,” Alex stated, additionally referring to the pepper mills.
It seems, even with context, no person totally understands this iceberg—together with us, the corporate that makes these pepper mills.
Picture by Armando Rafael
For Alex and Maren, their curiosity started at a furnishings retailer in Copenhagen, the place they noticed what they thought was a sculpture.
“I had no concept what it was,” he stated, “It was extremely elegant, however had no clear perform.”
A dialog with a salesman introduced some readability: The eight inch-tall, spiked, teak sculpture standing earlier than them was the work of Jens Quistgaard—a Danish designer who crafted greater than 4,000 merchandise for Dansk. This wood object is a kind of merchandise—it’s additionally, technically, a pepper mill.
“The salespeople had been fairly amused,” Alex continued, “They had been like: ‘You guys are Individuals. We don’t actually have these right here.’”
Which tracks—Quistgaard’s pepper mills, like most Dansk merchandise, had been primarily distributed all through america throughout their authentic manufacturing run from the late Fifties into the early ’70s—however did not promote, because the Individuals in the end handed on the befuddling piece of pepper equipment.
However the couple couldn’t keep away for lengthy. Just a few weeks later, whereas seeking a gift for Alex’s upcoming birthday, Maren turned to eBay in hopes of monitoring down the mill that caught her companion’s eye in Copenhagen. Instantly, she discovered dozens of Quistgaard’s pepper mills—and lots of extra questions, like: What number of are there? Why are there so many designs? And the place are the remainder of these items?
Let’s first acknowledge the one certainty surrounding Quistgaard’s pepper mills: They’re particularly loved by architects, designers, and creatives. Per Alex, an architect turned architectural photographer, the attraction’s rooted within the context wherein Quistgaard was requested to create.
“There’s an depth to how a lot he interrogated how a practical object may look a ton of various methods,” Alex stated, “and utilizing one thing, like a pepper mill, as a better outlet for creativity is a really seductive factor.”
Quistgaard would agree. In keeping with Stig Guldberg, creator of the biography, Jens Quistgaard: The Sculpting Designer, the Dansk designer discovered crafting pepper mills harking back to each “recess time” and the “chiseling, hollowing-out, and forming” of sculpting.
Different designers are drawn to the standard wherein Quistgaard’s pepper mills had been manufactured. Typically that includes high-grade teak and Peugeot-manufactured metallic grinders, the unique mills produced by Dansk had been constructed to face up to generations of use. For Brent Buck, a Brooklyn-based architect who owns probably the world’s most full Quistgaard pepper mill assortment—a 70-strong grouping presumably price $100,000—this sturdiness and craftsmanship is what separates these sculptures from a lot of at present’s merchandise.
“I restored all of the pepper mills myself,” Brent instructed me. “Think about at present’s world producing one thing that 65 years from now you can restore to look wonderful. I can’t consider one thing that’s bought at present that would try this.”
Picture by Armando Rafael
Naturally, the fandom surrounding these pepper mills led to a collective curiosity of their backstory. Sadly, the uncertainty of their historical past begins with even essentially the most primary of questions. Like, as Maren as soon as puzzled: What number of pepper mills did Quistgaard design?
Nicely, it doesn’t assist that Quistgaard, himself, wasn’t certain what number of he made. Or that he didn’t care. “I’m a designer, not an accountant,” the Dane instructed his biographer.
Dansk additionally doesn’t know. (An unlucky byproduct of the corporate’s quite a few possession adjustments has been the lack of historic knowledge and design archives).
To make issues extra difficult, the pepper mills by no means acquired names. Strictly referenced by their three-digit mannequin numbers in Dansk’s authentic advertising and marketing supplies, there’s no clear and apparent language to make use of when discussing and evaluating Quistgaard’s designs.
This lack of primary parameters will be maddening for collectors—an issue which Alex places greatest: “It feels essential to get a way of what the boundaries are for this factor. Like if we have now 20 of those mills, will we nonetheless want 100 extra?”
Fortunately, some pepper mill followers took it upon themselves so as to add readability the place they may. In keeping with Brent, who primarily collected Quistgaard’s mills through the early to mid 2010s, a lot of his information surrounding these items will be attributed to Mark Perlson’s Danish Pepper. Revealed in 2008, Perlson’s ebook was the primary work devoted to profiling Quistaard’s work—and one which in the end make clear essential pepper mill plot factors, like what number of had been made (roughly 70).
Across the similar time Brent was gathering, collector Todd Perdanzi created Peppermill Wiki—a barebones webpage that sought to “set up and make out there to the general public details about pepper mills. Not simply any pepper mills, however largely Dansk pepper mills designed by Jens Quistgaard.”
By the point Alex and Maren started gathering Quistgaard’s pepper mills in 2015, Peppermill Wiki was shut down. Solely accessible by way of screenshots harvested by the peerlessly named web archive, TheWaybackMachine, the American couple had been restricted in how a lot they may glean from the web about their new wood obsessions.
With time, Alex and Maren pieced collectively their very own understanding of Quistgaard’s work. Like Brent, they learn Danish Pepper. Then they started monitoring down outdated Dansk catalogs and commercials—scanning the copy for any type of perception that would convey them nearer to each the pepper mills and Quistgaard’s historical past.
All of the whereas, the couple’s assortment grew and grew. By means of shrewd eBay buying and the occasional thrift retailer discover, Alex and Maren constructed a set which Maren described as “full, apart from the tremendous uncommon ones.” In much less humble phrases, this implies 46 items.
Then COVID hit. Caught inside their New York Metropolis condominium with their cat, piano, and cabinets of wood sculptures, they devised an all-encompassing undertaking to protect their sanity: Creating a contemporary imaginative and prescient of Peppermill Wiki.
Picture by Armando Rafael
“Most interactions we have now with different collectors are individuals who inherit collections—or discover one thing in an attic whereas cleansing out their nice aunt’s home—and don’t totally understand what they’ve,” Maren instructed me. “So we needed to create the useful resource that we want existed in 2015—again once we first found Quistgaard and had been simply so anticipating extra details about him.”
And that they’ve: Combining Alex’s images and Maren’s background in museum research, the 2 have basically created a digital Quistgaard pepper mill exhibit that’s each filled with information and—just like the mills, themselves—visually interesting.
That stated, they’re going to want to replace their web site as a result of we—the group at Food52 and Dansk—are glad to announce that we’re relaunching three of Quistgaard’s most signature pepper mill designs: No. 826, No. 833, and No. 831. (Which, as you’ll discover, have additionally every acquired Danish names to match their design.) As for a way this impacts the variety of mills produced, we’re undecided. Once more, like Quistgaard, we’re designers, not accountants.
Which pepper mills ought to we convey again subsequent? Tell us within the feedback beneath!
