Since ancient times, man have found methods and used tools to grind spices. We will tell you about 3 important steps in the history of grinding:

The mortar and pestle, Peugeot’s pepper grinder and CrushGrind®.

The mortar and pestle

Though regular pepper grinders were used as early as in the 14^th century, the most popular and common grinding tool has been the mortar and pestle. Ancient Italian art of the 15^th century shows mortar and pestle in use, and the Mexican version of the mortar and pestle appears in pre-history as far back as 6.000 years ago.

The common materials used were stone, wood and marble. But around 1800 the first ceramic mortar and pestle were made by the famous English Potter Josiah Wedgwood to overcome the problem of acids attacking marble mortars and contamination of the wooden ones.

This is how people handled spices for centuries. Effective, however it required great effort.

Peugeot’s pepper grinder

But in 1842, a decisive change occurred. Well, at least decisive for grinding pepper.

Peugeot’s pepper grinder appeared and proved to be an ingenious innovation that has retained the same appearance and construction until today.

But for those 150 odd years, the downside to Peugeot’s pepper grinder was that it was a high priced product and it could only grind pepper.

On top of that, the world was full of poor functioning copies of Peugeot’s pepper grinder. And the world in large forgot about grinding other spices than pepper, and to some extend salt. They resorted to powder spices.

This was the market that CrushGrind^® challenged.

CrushGrind - the original ceramic mechanism®

In 1992 IDEAS initiated a product development in collaboration with a Japanese inventor named Kamioka, who works with pure ceramic materials

The goal was to develop a superior grinder with very clear objectives:

• a multi purpose ceramic grinder not only for pepper, but also salt, spices, herbs and blends like curries
• a grinding function at least equal to Peugeot’s fantastic pepper grinder made 150 years earlier in 1842
• a mass produced insert component adjusted to modern production

The results speaks for itself: today more than 20 million CrushGrind® units have been sold, and is inside grinders from high profiled brands like Tupperware, WMF, Alessi and Weber just to name a few.

The grinder market in general has been influenced from using metal and plastic to using ceramics. The way of using spices is rapidly changing; fresh ground spices are in fashion. All because of CrushGrind®.

Consequently, the world is now full of poor functioning copies of CrushGrind®. But CrushGrind® remains The Original Ceramic Mechanism.