Room 8: Curiosities @museum.de

No cause for alarm! It's only a coffee grinder!

This scarily satanic coffee-grinder is from France. It’s a hand grinder, and the top of the skull is removable. The crank is placed on the devil's scalp. The drawer for the freshly ground powder is inside the mouth. Was the mill intended as a warning against excessive coffee consumption? Possibly. Coffee was long regarded as the drink of Satan, especially in religious circles – addictive, and apt to turn decent citizens into rebels. But the image of the devil could also be seen as preventing mischief. There’s a saying, surely, about "casting out the devil with Beelzebub" – in other words, pitting one evil against another. Applied to our coffee grinder, it could mean that the devil's face is meant to prevent the supposedly negative effect of coffee.

In this and the following showcase, you’ll discover more coffee grinders with bizarre housings. Especially inventive is the coffee grinder in the shape of an early hot air balloon, a Montgolfière. It was made in around 1880, in memory of the Montgolfière brothers, who invented the hot-air balloon. The top of the balloon is removable, and there’s a crank concealed inside the housing.

Another weird example is the coffee grinder from Florida, made in 1880. It takes the shape of an exact replica of a diving helmet. And, like all the coffee grinders here, it actually works.

As the Notre Dame de Lourdes coffee-mill demonstrated, grinders in the form of famous buildings were very popular. Another example of this art form is the Austrian hand mill from 1880, which replicates the famous clock tower on the Schlossberg in Graz – the city’s landmark.