In the late 1950s, pepper was a must at the dinner table. And it had to be freshly ground. But pepper mills weren’t much fun until the self-taught designer and craftsman Tonn-P invented The Pepper Bird. That’s when grinding pepper at Danish dinner tables really became fun.
By the late 1950s, pre-ground pepper had fallen out of favour at lunch tables. The cardboard tins containing powder that could be sprinkled out were out of fashion. They didn’t retain the flavour.
Even the home economics experts were on board: only pepper from your own mill was the real thing.
Grinding pepper was all the rage
The pepper mill had become trendy, and most people had realised that pepper could be more than just the powder you sprinkled from a cardboard tin. In fact, there was no question at all that the coarsely ground peppercorns, which you could grind yourself over your chosen slice of luxury open sandwich with prawns, simply tasted best.
Unfortunately, this left families sitting around Danish dining tables with one problem. The pepper mills weren’t particularly attractive, and how on earth were you supposed to grind the peppercorns?
That’s where The Pepper Bird came in.
A favourite item on the dining table
Enter the self-taught craftsman Sven Erik Tonn-Petersen. In comes a playful, artistic design combined with functionality. And within a very short time, The Pepper Bird emerges, quickly becoming a favourite item on the dining table – a small piece of unique applied art that most people know and talk about.
The Pepper Bird delighted both young and old at the dining table. It was offered as a prize in competitions and featured in adverts as a lure to draw people from the city centre all the way to Overgaden Oven Vandet in Christianshavn.
The Pepper Bird brought life to the dinner table; it was amusing, decorative – and, not least, it delighted the children. It was so popular and well-known that it could even be used in a crossword puzzle.
In record time, The Pepper Bird was the talk of the town.
Design icon flies the nest
After a few years on the market, The Pepper Bird quietly flew away again. A design icon had flown the nest and did not return until 2015, when Spring Copenhagen relaunched The Pepper Bird in collaboration with Tonn-P’s family.
