In Alex Severin and Maren Lankford’s 18th flooring, one bed room, Higher West Facet residence you’ll discover a grand piano, a cat named Dorian, and almost 50 pepper mills.
“They’re little wood sculptures,” Maren advised me over Zoom, referencing the 2 floating cabinets in her backdrop, every lined end-to-end with their wood Dansk pepper mills—a group undoubtedly price 1000’s.
“Out of context, you don’t have any thought what tip of what iceberg you’re seeing,” Alex mentioned, additionally referring to the pepper mills.
It seems, even with context, no person completely understands this iceberg—together with us, the corporate that makes these pepper mills.
Photograph 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 thought what it was,” he mentioned, “It was extremely elegant, however had no clear operate.”
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 type of merchandise—it’s additionally, technically, a pepper mill.
“The salespeople have been fairly amused,” Alex continued, “They have been like: ‘You guys are Individuals. We don’t actually have these right here.’”
Which tracks—Quistgaard’s pepper mills, like most Dansk merchandise, have 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. A number of weeks later, whereas in quest of a gift for Alex’s upcoming birthday, Maren turned to eBay in hopes of monitoring down the mill that caught her accomplice’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 through which Quistgaard was requested to create.
“There’s an depth to how a lot he interrogated how a useful object might look a ton of various methods,” Alex mentioned, “and utilizing one thing, like a pepper mill, as a higher outlet for creativity is a really seductive factor.”
Quistgaard would agree. In line with Stig Guldberg, writer 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 through which Quistgaard’s pepper mills have been manufactured. Usually that includes high-grade teak and Peugeot-manufactured steel grinders, the unique mills produced by Dansk have been constructed to face up to generations of use. For Brent Buck, a Brooklyn-based architect who owns doubtlessly the world’s most full Quistgaard pepper mill assortment—a 70-strong grouping probably price $100,000—this sturdiness and craftsmanship is what separates these sculptures from a lot of in the present day’s merchandise.
“I restored all of the pepper mills myself,” Brent advised me. “Think about in the present day’s world producing one thing that 65 years from now you can restore to look wonderful. I can’t consider one thing that’s offered in the present day that might do this.”
Photograph 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 fundamental of questions. Like, as Maren as soon as questioned: What number of pepper mills did Quistgaard design?
Properly, it doesn’t assist that Quistgaard, himself, wasn’t positive what number of he made. Or that he didn’t care. “I’m a designer, not an accountant,” the Dane advised 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 sophisticated, the pepper mills by no means obtained names. Strictly referenced by their three-digit mannequin numbers in Dansk’s authentic advertising supplies, there’s no clear and apparent language to make use of when discussing and evaluating Quistgaard’s designs.
This lack of fundamental parameters could be maddening for collectors—an issue which Alex places finest: “It feels necessary to get a way of what the boundaries are for this factor. Like if we now have 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 line with Brent, who primarily collected Quistgaard’s mills throughout the early to mid 2010s, a lot of his information surrounding these items could be attributed to Mark Perlson’s Danish Pepper. Revealed in 2008, Perlson’s e book was the primary work devoted to profiling Quistaard’s work—and one which in the end make clear vital pepper mill plot factors, like what number of have been made (roughly 70).
Across the identical time Brent was accumulating, 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 principally Dansk pepper mills designed by Jens Quistgaard.”
By the point Alex and Maren started accumulating Quistgaard’s pepper mills in 2015, Peppermill Wiki was shut down. Solely accessible by screenshots harvested by the peerlessly named web archive, TheWaybackMachine, the American couple have 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 ads—scanning the copy for any kind of perception that might 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 group which Maren described as “full, aside from the tremendous uncommon ones.” In much less humble phrases, this implies 46 items.
Then COVID hit. Caught inside their New York Metropolis residence with their cat, piano, and cabinets of wood sculptures, they devised an all-encompassing mission to protect their sanity: Creating a contemporary imaginative and prescient of Peppermill Wiki.
Photograph by Armando Rafael
“Most interactions we now have 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 completely understand what they’ve,” Maren advised me. “So we needed to create the useful resource that we want existed in 2015—again after we first found Quistgaard and have been simply so longing for extra details about him.”
And that they’ve: Combining Alex’s pictures 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 mentioned, they’re going to want to replace their web site as a result of we—the staff at Food52 and Dansk—are pleased 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 obtained Danish names to match their design.) As for a way this impacts the variety of mills produced, we’re unsure. Once more, like Quistgaard, we’re designers, not accountants.
Which pepper mills ought to we convey again subsequent? Tell us within the feedback under!
