If former Milwaukeean Mark Perlson needs something that he is not able to find or cannot buy for an affordable price, he is likely to create it himself.
Such a predicament motivated the 39-year-old San Francisco computer production manager, collector, furniture designer and now author to write “Danish Pepper,” an art book released in May.
The 96-page book (published by CreateSpace, paperback, $24.99) features photos and illustrations of a series of sculptural wood salt and pepper mills designed by Jens Quistgaard.
He was “a celebrated Danish industrial designer whose clean-lined and immensely popular pieces for the Dansk brand of tableware helped define the Scadinavian Modern style for postwar Americans,” The New York Times wrote in Quistgaard’s January 2008 obituary.
According to Amazon.com, Perlson’s is the first book to focus on Quistgaard’s work.
Perlson, a grandson of the late Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle editor Edwarde F. Perlson, has a collection of some 100 Danish pepper mills.
He told The Chronicle in a telephone interview, “There was no source of information on Dansk [a company that Quistgaard was involved in founding] and Quistgaard’s work and it was a constant issue in collecting his [pieces]. The idea of the book was born out of the discovery of a few vintage Dansk ads which I found online,” which lead him to realize that there must be more information available.
The path to his interest in pepper mills began in Amsterdam where Perlson took a job in the music industry soon after graduating from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in the early 1990s.
“Always artistic, but never good at drawing,” Perlson said, “I liked the look of the cool stores and interesting designs, especially of furniture,” that he saw there where he was working for fellow-former-Milwaukeean and family friend Michael Dorf. Dorf was a founder of New York City’s influential avant-garde music club The Knitting Factory.
Perlson’s interest in industrial design was piqued in Europe, but his design knowledge developed through his work with record covers and design software.
When he returned to New York and continued working in music production, he became interested in the work of American architect and furniture designer Charles Eames, who was strongly influenced by a Finnish architect.
But because Perlson couldn’t afford to own Eames’ expensive chairs, he discovered and began collecting Danish pepper mills, which also feature the lines and shapes of Danish Modern furniture design.
“I have always liked collecting things. When I was a kid I collected patches, rocks, anything,” he said.
Perlson also started designing and building furniture inspired by similar styles. Designs for 15 pieces of furniture he has built for his own home or for friends can be seen on his Web site, www.perlson.com. Several of them have been featured in “Ready Made” magazine.
In 1999, Perlson said, four close Nicolet High School friends living in San Francisco (Josh Dorf, Matthew Nelson, David Steuer and Bill Morris) and a job opportunity pulled him there from New York.
His experience managing projects and taking them from the conceptual and design phases through production led to a job in Web design. It was right at the time that the dot.com industry was booming, Perlson said.
Two years ago, he took a job with Apple computers. Now married to graphic designer Mae Perlson, and the father of two-year-old Sacha, Perlson is an interactive producer for Apple.com, managing teams of designers who do all of the graphic design for Apple.
Last summer, a project that he produced, the redesign of Apple.com, was “recognized with distinction in the interactive category” by I.D. Magazine’s Annual Design Review.
For more about “Danish Pepper,” visit www.danishpepper.com.
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