This 1880s cruet stand, once the rage, tells delectable stories. HU sent me a round swiveling carousel of silver plate inset with five crystal cruets, topped with an elaborate silver figural handle featuring a nude putti.
By the late 1880s every upper middle class and most middle class aspirational families of the US and England owned one of these on the dining table. Separate models existed for breakfast lunch, and dinner. After all different meals required different condiments. In the 1890s these cruet holders became the most common wedding gift in the US. Today both the functionality and the style of these ornate beauties are passé. In the late 19th century people considered them a marker of solid middle class genteel decorum. A socially acceptable host need at least one to exhibit proper dining manners.
What did the cruets hold?
They began in Italy with a vial for vinegar and one for oil in the 17th century. Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), an Italian Jesuit Cardinal, politician and diplomat, chief advisor to both King Louis XIII and XIV (1642-1661), brought the form to France. King Louis XIV came to the throne at age four, thus the young King fell under the Cardinal’s direction until he ascended the throne at twenty-two.
Cardinal Mazarin, a declared FOODIE born in Abruzzo, gave Italian delicacies to the fine ladies of the Court. resulting in pastries named after him. He treated his seven darkly beautiful virginal nieces as his own children. He called them, in fashionable slang, “the Mazarinettes.” As a man of the cloth he never married himself. He set lavish tables to entertain his nieces and their future suitors, hand picked to ensure their future wealth. Due to his fine palette he seasoned his own food at the table.
By the 18th century most noble European families owned cruet table sets, crystal bottles set in a sterling stand. By the 19th century most British and middle class American families did too. These sets didn’t hold a salt shaker, yet to be invented. The invention of electroplating cheapened the sets when silver plate became affordable. The silver plated revolving stand held vials for balsamic vinegar, with a strainer in the lid, olive oil, mustard, spices or soy sauce, pepper, sugar. Sets held up to ten bottles. Salt came in a separate tiny bowl with a tiny spoon at each place setting.
Table Etiquette
The mid to late 19th century became a formative time in the diversification of tableware. A certain philosophy of decorum encouraged this demand. During the Victorian (1837-1901) and Edwardian eras (1901-1910) correct knowledge and usage of various forms of tableware offered a passport to civilized genteel society. Society created rules around objects invented for dining. How a diner handled his implements became closely observed. Rule books were written about when to use the pickle fork. Thus, the Industrial Revolution’s tableware production and mid-19th century moral code intertwined, and created a market for consuming (literally) both food and morality.
The home, a female gendered space, differentiated from the hostile male world of commerce, competition, and trade. Genteel table manners became imperative. Formal rules governed dining, and these rules came with serving pieces to match.
The cruet set is one complex example of such specialization. Middle class proper diners knew how to handle the salt cellar and spoon, the sweetmeat tongs, the oyster forks, the terrapin sauce pans, the punch spoons, the pastry forks, the egg spoons, the preserved fruit and vegetable dishes, the bone plates (for gnawed bones), and the fish trowels. A matched set of dishware became imperative by the mid to late 19th century.
Ads in mail order catalogues state a set is a hundred pieces: plates, soup plates, twifflers (eight-inch plates, four seven-inch muffin plates, soup and sauce tureens, platters, covered and open servers, pitchers, gravy boat, butter dish, and bakers. 1850s-1900 dining required a wide range of glassware, ceramics, silver plate, and many forms of crystal. A plethora of books and domestic periodicals were written about how to equip and run a proper home.
Thus, the cruet is an artifact that represents the archaeology and anthropology of 19th century domesticity and gentility. The value is $75, in spite of its tasty narrative history!