Two Hand-Cranked Brass Grinder Mills

These are just awesome!!

I picked them up at the last flea-market for the year before it closes for Christmas. They're old-fashioned hand-cranked spice-mills or whatever. I think they're so cool. I've seen a lot of these in the past (and I never bought them) but something compelled me to get these two.

I saw the BIG ONE first. I've never seen one this big before! It's over a foot long! And the little one was just cuteness personified. Or brassified.



I've no idea how old they are. I believe, early-mid 20th century.

They come apart, as you can see:



It took a LOT of cleaning to get them up to snuff. The big one (on the right) was clogged with what looked like loads of old coffee-grounds. Some caffeine-hound really liked him some coffee!!



I looooooooooove the decorations on this. The banding, the milling, the greek-key geometric patterns, the leaves and flowers...It's screaming to live inside someone's rustic farmhouse kitchen, next to a copper kettle hissing with steam!

And the little fellah's just as cute as a newly-fluffed bunny...

 

Greek salt/pepper(small),Turkish coffee grinder(large)

 

They all seem to come from around the Med. The big one is made in Italy.

 

Wow! They look great now.
Great pics, too!

 

I have one very similar to your smaller one that came from Syria. A friend of mine from there brought it to me new in the 90s. I use mine for grinding whole spices as needed.

 

Yeah there are companies which still make these today, that's true. I just love these. I'm still polishing them...

BTW, the big one has a sort of foundry mark on the base.

It's three swords inside a circle. Like...

(\|/)

And the grindstone has some words on it. The only one I can make out looks like "SPADE", and then "GARANT--O" and "--IRE"...?

...does anyone recognise it? It might help date this thing.

 

Decided to sell the small one, and keep the big one for myself. I've got a lady who said she'd been chasing one of these for a while, so I'll give her the smaller one.

I've filled the big one up with a small amount of peppercorns and given it a few good cranks just to see the nature of the beast. It grinds very well, but it takes a lot of effort! It's an extremely efficient grinder! I can see why they still make them today.