Antique Silver Salts

Antique silver salts are a familiar vessel to most, a simple or ornate dish which contained salt for the dinner table. However, the silver salt has very interesting origins.

Salt was once an expensive commodity, and as such Required a magnificent vessel to accommodate it. The earliest antique silver salts were impressive "standing salts" from which the master would fill smaller silver salts known as table salts. Control of the salt was a symbolic position of power and status, guests were seated in relation to it, and it is from this tradition that we get the expression "below the salt", meaning that a person was in a subordinate position.

The silver table salts were the true origin of the antique silver salts we use today, usually they were known as silver trencher salts or silver trenchers. In the eighteenth century silver salts grew legs, and became cauldron salts- a design common to this day.