We had been limping along with disposable pepper grinders from Aldi for a few years, but after the plastic mechanisms kept getting ground up and dumped into our food, I thought it was time for a grown-up one. Whenever I need to buy something practical and/or boring like this, I ask myself if there is a classic version of it. Then I consider whether I like that classic version. It works a bit better than the process of going to Target and Bed Bath & Beyond, thinking everything looks like junk, and then buying something anyway out of desperation.
In this case, I learned that Dansk has reissued a few of its classic Jens Quistgaard pepper mill designs. Quistgaard was one of Denmark’s first industrial designers and is responsible for some unnecessarily beautiful objects entering people’s homes. And hooray for that. Just look at the variety of these beasties. This is a collection for sale at 1st Dibs.
As I was saying, not only did Dansk re-release a few Quistgaard designs, but they were on sale at Macy’s. And there was one I liked: the Jane. There’s a bad review from someone who couldn’t figure out how to load the pepper mill, and that it didn’t come with instructions. Mine did—although the salt part was quite ambiguous. For posterity’s sake, you just prise the two halves apart and fill the bottom half with peppercorns. There’s a metal rod coming up from the bottom that slots into a white nylon ring in the top half, and they slide back together fairly easily. You don’t want to fill it too high or it won’t go together properly again.
The salt filling part is trickier. You might think you pour it through the hole in the nylon ring. Nope. You might think you need to pry off the nylon ring in the top half. Nope. (I did, and inside it’s just a blind cavity that goes nowhere.) To fill the salt shaker up, you have to twist off the wooden peg at the top. Don’t be shy; you won’t break it. Oh, and apparently you can adjust the grind using the wheel on the bottom. So, there you have it. A full set of operating instructions for the Jane pepper mill by Dansk.
1 Comment
Quistgaard is brilliant!