Unknown, Antique, 19th C. Peugeot Frères Brevetés French Coffee Grinder Table Sculpture, c.1895

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This is being sold as a piece of (functional?) decorator table sculpture for a kitchen or restaurant. I do not … Read more This is being sold as a piece of (functional?) decorator table sculpture for a kitchen or restaurant. I do not know if or how it works. the wheel and gears turn. It might be missing a cover on the handle. It is a lovely antique piece. Made in France.

A halfcentury before they produced their first car, the Peugeot brothers were making coffee grinders, continuing to do so for over 100years. In 1840 the Peugeots produced their first moulin a
cafe out of a combination of metal and wood. The beans were inserted into the metal
hopper up top; metal gears were turned by a woodenknob-capped metal crank; and the blade-cut grindings fell into a pull-out wooden drawer in the bottom of the housing. The first models were utilitarian affairs, purely form follows function with little in the way of decoration. But later models
began to display some craft confidence, some with colored enamel, at some point they also began experimenting with cast-iron models as the Industrial Revolution took hold. At some point, presumably between the '30s and the '50s, they even experimented with sheet metal and Bakelite models. See less