Noir

Noir

Growing up in Doncaster we lived within a few miles of Finningley Airbase where the Vulcan bombers were originally stationed and every year there was the stupendous Finningley Airshow.

All the boys (and some of the girls) would flock to see the awesome collection of planes that would roar across the skies and over the runway with ear-splitting jet engines and none more so than the impossibly sleek dart that was Concorde.

I was hooked on jet engines for a while and went to study Engineering at Nottingham University partly as a result so came to understand how such engines actually work by multiple banks of compressors and turbines forcing the air and fuel to explode under pressure – such control over the forces of nature.

It struck me later that this might serve as a rather appropriate metaphor when designing a Salt&Pepper mill which by turning the shaft sort of forces the peppercorns into a compressor and crushes them to release flavour. That was the theory at least and the finished product then came together easily.

Some say the final form looks a bit like an elegant lady in a black dress but I say is all beauty in the eye of the beholder…