Accession Number

999.024.002.001a-c

Alternate Name

stand, caster

Description

a.) revolving, round holder with six holes to hold bottles, situated midway from top to bottom; raised pattern of three groups of swallows, ferns, flowers; b.) pedestal; upside down bowl shape with a post soldered to the base; band along the outside bottom edge has a raised cast design of repeating clusters of three flowers and ferns along the top edge of the band is a narrow band of small repeating raised dots c.) handle; long and tapering outwards to the top; handle screws onto the bolt that comes through the top of the base; design cast into the top is three open fans; below is an open oval for carrying; in a vertical design is a group of bulrushes on the right with two swallows one above the other; at the base are three slightly upturned sections.

Narrative

Cruet sets were commonplace on British and North American dining tables during the late 19th Century. They were not looked upon favourably by all people familiar with the culinary arts:

"A cook having any self-respect, and any respect for his art, has a right to feel insulted if a guest proceeds to powder his food with salt and pepper before having even tasted it. Such a barbarous proceeding implies disastrous social antecedents on the part of the guest, unaccustomedness to delicate eating, or a callous and bluntness of palate which renders him unworthy to taste any but the rankest food and the most scarifying of spiritous liquors.
 
For such palates as these, deadened by the abuse of tobacco and whiskey, special relishes have been invented of a penetrating and fiery nature, fabricated according to recipes bequeathed by deceased noblemen, and sold in bottles decorated with strange labels and under titles which I will not enumerate.
 
In order to facilitate the use of these diabolical and dyspepsia-producing relishes the contrivance known as a cruet-stand has been elaborated, and now, for years and years, has figured on Anglo-Saxon dinner-tables as a hideous and ever-present reminder of the wretched state into which the art of cookery has fallen in Anglo-Saxon countries." ¹

1. Child, Theodore. Delicate Feasting (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890)
 

History of Use

Owned by the donor's maternal great-grandmother, Mrs. Ann McCormick (nee Clegg). Born England in 1870 she later moved to Canada when in 1898 she married Andrew McCormick in London, Ontario.

Date

circa 1884

Dimensions

46.6 x 22.8 cm

Material

Metal, silver

Technique

Machined; Plated