06-002.
Found on January 10, 2006 in Hopkins, MN.
Jens Quistgaard
Pepper mill
Dansk Designs
USA, c. 1960
3.25 x 4.5 x 7"
Teak
Manufacturer's mark and designer's initials
I'm always excited to find a Jens Quistgaard pepper mill, and am even more excited when it is one of the early versions such as this example. These shapes were made available for a number of years, and like most consumer designs they evolved over the span of their production. The telltale sign of when a Dansk pepper mill was produced is in the grinding mechanism itself. The very earliest were all metal, while newer versions had a mechanism in a mixture of plastic and metal, or all plastic in the latest iteration. All mechanisms were made by the prestigious French culinary company Peugeot, which speaks to the quality of the design as well as the functional of the mills.
Todd Pederzani commented: There's a lot more variety in grinders than you indicated -- Tre Spade (of Italy) and Goldenberg (like Peugeot, of France) also made grinding mechanisms. I would doubt that the black plastic mechanisms were made by Peugeot, and there are metal grinders used in the last (I'm guessing) peppermills sourced in Thailand or Malaysia.
I have a bit of information about the Dansk peppermills on my wiki above.