Now... I'm guessing quite a few of us collect other things apart from lamps and lanterns so this might be of interest. This came my way recently via Shpock and was described as a meat grinder! It's blooming huge and took quite a while to clean up as it had probably been left in a leaky shed... lots of rust but being cast iron it was easy enough to remove. I've just ground some beans and it still works very well! I've seen these described on eBay as Victorian which is interesting as I wasn't aware that they invented plastics!
@ColinG Perhaps it’s not plastic ...... Perhaps, if you’re drunk enough Bacchian elixir, it might be ivory from an Indian (red) elephant. You just don’t know what those British got up to during the British Raj in India. Cheers Pete
Definitely red elephant ivory... if I ever sell it, that's going to be in my description! I should have taken before photos but I always forget! Honestly it had really been left to rot but nothing a rotary wire brush couldn't handle!
Hi Colin @ColinG , the early versions had wooden handles, the later ones (like mine) came with plastic handles. We are talking 1980s here. The "proper" originals are made by Spong, a company dedicated to make the life of the housewife easier. Mr Spong invented or enhanced quite a few contraptions and started "mass production" (now we are talking late Victorian times!) to make sure everyone could afford to buy his products. The coffee grinder you (and I) have is a sort of reproduction (shame they fitted the plastic handles!). On these shores, the coffee roasters Douwe Egberts had sort of a stamp printed on the package, you'd cut them out and stick them onto a leaflet. Once full, you'd send it to the company together with a small amount of money (mainly postage and a few cents extra) and receive your article of choice (in this case, a lovely coffee grinder!). Mine has seen a lot of use (it was NIB when I bought it a couple years ago) grinding pounds & pounds of coffee on living history events. People love it! And so do I! ;-)
Oh, and by the way, I am trying VERY hard not to buy any extra coffee grinders, having a "handful" of them already........... (I have big hands... )
@ColinG ..It is a very handsome and useful piece of kit! Freshly ground coffee can be very evocative Talking of Spong, that reminds me.....when i was a nipper there was a bumper crop of runner beans and I was employed to turn the handle and feed the beans on the 'Spong' bean slicer! ...Green, it was...
Hey @Wim - very interesting history lesson, thanks! I've only got 2 so far and one to give as a present to my son but I suspect there will be more! As you say the smell of freshly ground coffee is wonderful and it makes the best tasting coffee in my opinion. Drilling the rusted screws out was a labour of love and pretty tricky as well. Identifying the 3/16 Witworth machine screws took a while so they've now been replaced and after a fresh coat of paint it's working brilliantly again. Like most old things it was built to last and relatively easy to repair!
Reminds me of a brief discussion I enjoyed once with my wife's book group about the relevance today of women changing their surnames when getting married. One member said that she had no strong feelings on the subject but she did not change her surname to her husband's when she had got married. She went on to say her husband's surname was Spong - "What of it?" I enquired. She answered , "Well my name is Victoria and I didn't want to sound like a cake". Truth sometimes stranger than fiction...
A woman called Victoria Spong would have been hilarious.... so I guess she definitely did the right thing!
