Shake & Brake

Be careful what you wish for. In the early 1980s, Andrea Ludden simply wanted a pepper mill that carried out its stated purpose.

Soon enough, a lineup of broken pepper mills decorated the windowsill of her kitchen, and friends and neighbors started contributing to her accidental collection. 

As her stockpile grew, Ludden noticed something that fascinated her. A trained archaeologist, she began seeing salt and pepper shakers as time capsules that revealed much about the era and culture in which they were made, from material to shape to even how many holes they contained. Put many of those shakers together, and you can see a “rainbow of history,” explains Ludden’s daughter, also named Andrea, who shares her mom’s passion.

Today the Ludden family owns the world’s largest collection of pepper mills (1,500), but that’s just a fraction of the story. Their Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, houses some 20,000 items from around the world. Opened in 2002, the unusual attraction has attracted international publicity, and a sister museum in Guadalest, Spain, holds another 20,000 shakers.

While pointing out the intricacies of a plastic salt and pepper shaker near the entrance of the museum in Gatlinburg’s Winery Square, the younger Andrea Ludden can barely contain herself. Then again, this is no ordinary table accessory. Mimicking an old-fashioned Singer sewing table, a miniature sewing machine descends into a table when the lid closes. Tiny drawers hold salt on one side, pepper on the other. “Who would have thought of making that?” marvels Ludden. 

Elsewhere in the gallery, plastic TVs and laundry machines represent “gifts with purchase” from the 1950s. Snowglobes sit near Santas. Magnetic Siamese cats eye ceramic rhinoceroses. There are Pennsylvania Dutch rocking chairs cast in scrap metal and Native American drums made of leather and wood.

And that’s just in the first room. Turn the corner (and then another, and another) and the themed displays range from a vegetable patch “crawling” with snails and worms to a traffic jam complete with a helicopter hovering overhead. The transportation section is particularly, well, moving: wagons and bulls, trains and sports cars, witch’s brooms and roller skates—and a stork out on delivery.

A 3,000-year-old mortar and pestle holds court alongside a bag of 600-million-year-old Michigan salt. A chef holds up a black cat and a bird—a nod to the Great Depression when people would eat just about anything they could get their hands on. Says Ludden: “It’s a snapshot of what our society went through—in a salt and pepper shaker.”

The museum celebrates creativity and resource, but it also puts a spotlight on the material world: coal, onyx, marble, lucite. A Gatlinburg artist hand-drilled holes into a real eggshell and perched the delicate shaker on a ring of pearls. The final room, aka “the vault,” showcases riches including those made of cut crystal, gold, even titanium. 

Elsewhere in the collection, kitties are dolled up with rhinestones and poodles have real fur. Souvenir shakers have come from near and far, from Dollywood—including a pair of butterfly wings autographed by Dolly Parton—to the Falkland Islands. A couple of hikers donated a basic set that traveled in their backpack the length of the Appalachian Trail. Shakers made of volcanic ashes commemorate the blasts of Mount St. Helen as well as Mount Vesuvius. 

And if that’s not enough, the gift shop includes another 1,200 or so shakers for visitors inspired to start their own collection. Just don’t say the Luddens didn’t warn you: You might not be able to stop at one set.

461 Brookside Village Way, Gatlinburg, Tenn. Daily, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; $3 admission; 12 and under free. 865.430.5515; thesaltandpeppershakermuseum.com.