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 practically 50 pepper mills.
“They’re little picket sculptures,” Maren instructed me over Zoom, referencing the 2 floating cabinets in her backdrop, every lined end-to-end with their picket Dansk pepper mills—a set undoubtedly value 1000’s.
“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 completely 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 picket 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 People. 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 unique manufacturing run from the late Fifties into the early ’70s—however did not promote, because the People in the end handed on the befuddling piece of pepper equipment.
However the couple couldn’t keep away for lengthy. A couple of weeks later, whereas looking for a gift for Alex’s upcoming birthday, Maren turned to eBay in hopes of monitoring down the mill that caught her associate’s eye in Copenhagen. Instantly, she discovered dozens of Quistgaard’s pepper mills—and plenty 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 during which 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 larger outlet for creativity is a really seductive factor.”
Quistgaard would agree. In line with Stig Guldberg, creator of the biography, Jens Quistgaard: The Sculpting Designer, the Dansk designer discovered crafting pepper mills paying homage to each “recess time” and the “chiseling, hollowing-out, and forming” of sculpting.
Different designers are drawn to the standard during which Quistgaard’s pepper mills had been manufactured. Usually that includes high-grade teak and Peugeot-manufactured metallic grinders, the unique mills produced by Dansk had been constructed to resist 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 presumably value $100,000—this sturdiness and craftsmanship is what separates these sculptures from lots of at the moment’s merchandise.
“I restored all of the pepper mills myself,” Brent instructed me. “Think about at the moment’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 at the moment that would do 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 probably the most primary of questions. Like, as Maren as soon as puzzled: What number of pepper mills did Quistgaard design?
Properly, 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 modifications has been the lack of historic knowledge and design archives).
To make issues extra sophisticated, the pepper mills by no means acquired names. Strictly referenced by their three-digit mannequin numbers in Dansk’s unique 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 might be maddening for collectors—an issue which Alex places finest: “It feels vital to get a way of what the boundaries are for this factor. Like if we’ve 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 through the early to mid 2010s, a lot of his data surrounding these items might 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 had been made (roughly 70).
Across the similar time Brent was accumulating, collector Todd Perdanzi created Peppermill Wiki—a barebones webpage that sought to “manage and make accessible 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 accumulating Quistgaard’s pepper mills in 2015, Peppermill Wiki was shut down. Solely accessible by screenshots harvested by the superbly named web archive, TheWaybackMachine, the American couple had been restricted in how a lot they may glean from the web about their new picket 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 previous Dansk catalogs and ads—scanning the copy for any form of perception that would carry them nearer to each the pepper mills and Quistgaard’s historical past.
All of the whereas, the couple’s assortment grew and grew. By way 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 picket sculptures, they devised an all-encompassing mission to protect their sanity: Creating a contemporary imaginative and prescient of Peppermill Wiki.
Picture by Armando Rafael
“Most interactions we’ve 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 instructed me. “So we wished to create the useful resource that we want existed in 2015—again once we first found Quistgaard and had been simply so longing for 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 data and—just like the mills, themselves—visually interesting.
That stated, they’re going to wish to replace their web site as a result of we—the crew at Food52 and Dansk—are completely happy 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 unsure. Once more, like Quistgaard, we’re designers, not accountants.
Which pepper mills ought to we carry again subsequent? Tell us within the feedback under!
