Coffee came to Europe from Ethiopia, where it has been known since the 9th century and where the saying “Coffee is our bread” is still in use. Initially, people ate red coffee berries whole or soaked them in water and made a drink from the pulp. Only in the Middle Ages they learned to dry and roast coffee beans. The Bedouin, nomadic Arab tribes, began to grind coffee using mortars. It was more convenient to transport and store coffee beans, so they were crushed only before brewing.

The first manual coffee grinders appeared in the 15th century. For five centuries, they used the same operating principle as the mill with grindstones that ground grain between the small gaps in the stones. When grinding coffee beans, the grindstones could be placed further apart to obtain a coarser grind, or they could be shifted closer together to get a fine powder. The grindstones were rotated using a handle, and the finished coffee powder was directed into a special drawer. The case of a simple coffee grinder was made of wood, while expensive grinders were painted with glaze and embellished with decorative elements.

In the 18th century, the first coffee shops opened in Europe, and coffee plantations were established in the European colonies — in Jamaica, Cuba and Brazil. The demand for manual coffee grinders was growing, and they were put into industrial production. The first factory for the production of coffee grinders was in France. That was the beginning of the Peugeot Citroën company, the second largest car manufacturer in Europe.

In 1810, the cousins Jean-Pierre and Jean-Frédéric Peugeot founded the Peugeot Frères company — the Brothers Peugeot. They turned a family grain mill in the east of France into their first foundry. The company started producing metal parts, work tools, spare parts, shredders for pepper, salt and coffee. Later, the Peugeot factory began to assemble bicycles and only then — cars.

The Peugeot brothers made minor changes to the working principle of the manual coffee grinder. Their devices were high-quality, ground quickly and produced different coffee grinds. The company offered a lifetime warranty for the steel mechanism, so the coffee grinder from the collection of the Glazov Museum of Local Lore can still be used for its intended purpose.

The history of caramel in Russia began in the 14th century, and the Russian word for hard candy “ledenets” was derived from the word “lyod”, meaning ice, as these candies were reminiscent of ice. Lollipops were traditionally made in the shape of cockerels, bears and horses, and were available in several colors. Cylinder-shaped candies with mint or barberry flavor were also very popular. The most affordable candies in the 19th century were small multicolored Montpensier caramels.

Their name is redolent of the atmosphere of the French court of Louis XIII, where it was fashionable to treat oneself to small fragrant sweets. The king’s niece, the Duchess of Montpensier, was known in Russia through the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The Glazov Museum displays a tin candy box “Montpensier candies. Landrin’s Partnership”, made in the early 20th century.

The factories of Georg Landrin were popular in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Riga. They were official suppliers of sweets to the Imperial House of Romanov, and after the Russian Revolution they became part of the confectionery enterprise “Azart”, which still exists today. There is a St. Petersburg urban legend about the founder of the Montpensier Factory and creator of the sweets, Georg Landrin. There once lived a young pastry chef by the name of Landrin. He knew how to make candy like no other: they were red-and-white lollipops. He wrapped these candies in paper wrappers and took them to the merchant Eliseyev’s store for sale. One day Landrin forgot to wrap a batch of sweets, and Eliseyev refused to take them. Upset, Fyodor Landrin sat down on a bench next to a gymnasium, and the gymnasium students who ran past quickly bought all the sweets.

The pastry chef began to come to the gymnasium with his lollipops every day. They were inexpensive and quickly gained popularity among young people. Every time during the break, the schoolgirls cried for the pastry chef as they were not allowed to leave the gymnasium before the end of their lessons. The cries “Landrin, Landrin!” became so familiar to everyone around them that people started calling the lollipops “landrinki”. The successful pastry chef soon opened his shop in the center of the capital and changed his name to a more euphonious one — “Georg Landrin”.