Salt Spoon & Cellar Enigma

[Aguest]

Hello General Question Peoples, I have always wondered why are salt cellars not made to match the pattern number of the salt spoons?
Let's take, for instance, the Gorham company. I have found many Gorham salt spoons with pattern numbers on it, and they most certainly match the pattern number. A birds nest salt spoon very much matches the pattern. A St. Cloud salt spoon is very similar to the other pieces in the pattern. Etc.
But when it comes to salt cellars, they seem completely different and they don't seem to match any pattern at all. The numbers on the Gorham salt cellars have nothing to do with any pattern number, and the salt cellars don't look even remotely similar to any other pattern. Were salt cellars just sold separately and not made to match any specific pattern? Was it common in the late 1800s to just mix and match salt spoons and salt cellars? I am really interested in the American Salt Spoons and Salt Cellars, although any comments on the relationship between British Salt Spoons and British Salt Cellars would also be appreciated. I have taken the Gorham company as an example of the American market.

(I have a pair of Gorham Seal-Top Elizabethan-Style Salt Spoons which do not match any pattern, only marked STERLING with old Gorham Marks, which inspired this question. I will post them just for aesthetic purposes, and I do not mean to violate the regulations of this forum. I found a pair of Elizabethan-Style Triangular Salt Cellars online which might have matched these spoons, although it cannot be proven that these spoons match those salt cellars. It simply raises the general question about how to link salt spoons with corresponding salt cellars, and started my quest for knowledge.)

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[Faustina Bollinger]

I have a similar one! That little spoon sits in my salt pig and just asking to be used.

[Aguest]

::: Hooray for the salt pig :::: I just wondered which salt cellars might be a match for this pair of salt spoons, but no pattern appears to match, and it raised the larger question about salt cellars and salt spoons ::: I don't understand the system of numbers of American salt cellars, particularly Gorham and Whiting, and why they do not seem to match a pattern number or a pattern name :::

[dragonflywink]

Salt spoons are flatware, those produced in silver or silverplate flatware line patterns would be sold for use with any type of salt cellar, whether silver, glass, ceramic, etc. - if there was a holloware line produced in the same pattern, then an open salt might be also be available, and then a matched set could be assembled.

Open salts are holloware, and like the majority of holloware, there wouldn't necessarily be a pattern name or even other related pieces - with salts, there might be a matching pepper shaker and mustard pot, and there were certainly sets made in novelty and specialty patterns. As an example, in Gorham's Narragansett-style salt and spoon sets, both pieces bore the same four digit production numbers, with variants having a different number.

Period catalogs and advertisements typically show open salts and shakers sold separately and also in sets of various combinations, might be just a pair or set of salt cellars, could include the matching shakers and/or spoons, but the spoons were most often in an unrelated pattern, and not necessarily a named line pattern. Silver or silverplate salt spoons were also offered paired with glass salts, and salt spoons were also produced in other materials.

Regarding the numbers found, they're internal production codes, and Gorham codes are often eccentric and inconsistent, other than general dating by the dates certain marks were used, and of course, the date marks, if present, Gorham can't really be dated by production codes since they weren't sequential - though sequential numbers are sometimes found on variants in multi-motif series or on pieces of sets.

~Cheryl