Thanks to Teak Pepper reader Brad B for sending me these photos of a super rare, super crazy Nissen designed teak mill he recently acquired. Although Quistgaard’s mills are often referred to as “chess piece” mills, it was actually Nissen who marketed his mills as shaped like chess pieces. Most of them are roughly shaped like pawns or other pieces – close enough to use them in a game if you got them all and had a big enough board. The 1972 Nissen catalog actually has one called a “knight”, but it really looks nothing like a knight.
However, there is no mistaking this piece is a knight from a chess set. It is one of the strangest and most elaborate of all the mills I have seen. The workmanship is amazing – the horse shape must have been created on a lathe and then the four heads cut out by hand. At the top is a wood plug for the pepper corns, there’s no salt shaker on this one.
I’ve never seen this one before, so I hope you enjoy.
