Electric Coffee Percolator

I nearly had to pry this retro ‘Best‘ coffee percolator out of the hands of its owner – luckily the lovely lady eventually agreed to sell it to me because otherwise things might have got physical! Despite it’s obvious signs of wear (the body of the percolator has quite a few scratches and it looks like someone’s actually welded the coffee basket!), it’s so unusual (and beautiful!) that I just had to have it! It looks like the type of appliance that you often see for sale on eBay, but unfortunately in South Africa we have so little of this super cool ’50s and ’60s kitchenalia – so little that I’m prepared to fight for the pieces that I do see! Aside from its rarity (you seldom see pale blue percolators!) it’s also a mad handsome coffee percolator which could easily rival the likes of Smeg, and at a fraction of the cost. Obviously there’s some wear to the outside of the percolator, but the major damage is to the coffee basket which I can only assume corroded over time. Someone was clearly committed to this coffee machine though because they took the time to fix the holes – it doesn’t make for the prettiest of coffee baskets, but from what I can see it should do its job just fine, which is what’s most important.

Note: The percolator has four settings: Weak (W), Medium (M), Strong (S) and a P setting – we’re not sure what the P stands for, but if you set it to P (by pulling the knob out and turning it) it just seems to carry on boiling. Obviously the stronger the coffee the longer it boils for. The green light comes on when the coffee’s ready. The red light doesn’t light up, but it’s just a power light, so not essential.

Dimensions: 24cm tall x 14cm in diameter (at its widest)