Yesterday there was a knock at my door and it was mr postman! We’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately – I think it’s safe to say we’re probably best friends by now (Juli edit: no, he doesn’t seem too pleased with you at the moment). My order from Amazon had finally arrived: “Danish Pepper“ by Mark Perlson. I had been holding out on the off chance the book was going to become available in Canada, but I found out the book was actually self-published and not only that, the entire design was done by the author, including all of the beautiful full-page photos.

The great thing about this book is the way it was executed. Being the first book about teak pepper mills, JHQ, or even Dansk this book could have gone in a number of directions, but the author kept it interesting for casual readers by keeping the beginning half of the book short and sweet. There’s actually only about 5 pages of book in the beginning dedicated to the history of Quistgaard and Dansk allowing a casual reader to sift through the book quite easily while retaining a lot of well constructed information about JHQ’s history. JHQ fanatics are rewarded with great visuals of vintage Dansk ads, information about grinder mechanisms and identifying the ages of the pepper mills, and what I found the most interesting, the design evolution of the Mills. (I’ll never even consider buying a Thai mill now)

Whether you know anything about Danish Pepper mills or not, you’ll appreciate the 50 beautiful photographs as well as the 17 illustrations by Robert Chipman, there’s such a rich history here about turning the utilitarian into functional pieces of art. I highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in learning about JHQ and his legacy, though I have to warn you, it might turn you into a fanatic pepper mill collector. Be sure to check out the Teak Pepper Blog aswell! It’s quickly become one of my daily stops.

-John