If only these salt cellars reproduced as illustrations could give tongue to the secrets they caught in whisper from the upper end of the table before the withdrawing chamber, prototype of our modern drawing-room, became a necessity! If walls had ears, and if the salt cellars of Tudor England or of the stormy days of the Stuarts could have been fitted with American gramophone wax cylinders, the by-ways of secret history would be less tangled to the historian.
Had this been the case, modern millionaires would have been in competition with one another to secure precious records, as it is only a rich man who can afford to gather together a representative collection of old salt cellars. But for all that, the collector with small means, who is less ambitious, may obtain specimens that are of exceptional interest, and in his quest he may, even in these days when collectors scour Europe, come across an example which may be antique.
As may be imagined, these “salts” are very varied in character. They may be of silver, of earthenware, or of ivory. They may be of simple form with little to distinguish them artistically, or, on the other hand, of such intricate design and rare workmanship as to make them superb examples of the art of the jeweller or silversmith.
STANDING SALT CELLAR. GOTHIC PERIOD. c. 1500.
Hour-glass form. Height 9¹/₄ in. From a drawing by De la Motte.
(At Christ’s College, Cambridge.)
Take, for instance, the salt cellar sold at Christie’s in 1902 for £3,000. It was only 7⁵/₈ inches in height. It is silver-gilt, bearing the London hall-mark for 1577, and the maker’s mark, a hooded falcon, probably the work of Thomas Bampton, of the “Falcon.” The receptacle for the salt is of rock crystal, and the base stands upon claw feet, which are of crystal. The cover is square, having a circular dome top, above which stands a delicately modelled figure of a cherub as an apex.
A standing salt of the time of James I, with the London hall-mark for 1613, was sold at Christie’s in 1903 for £1,150. The height of this is 11³/₈ inches, and beyond its special value on account of its age and rarity, its form is not possessed of greater elegance than many a lowly pepper caster whose presence it would scorn on the same board.