Prior to the seventeenth century, salt was a precious commodity. The earliest surviving English salt dishes, dating from the late fifteenth century, were imposing objects securing a prominent position at the table. In colonial America the earliest examples were spool shaped, succeeded in about 1700 by the trencher salt, a simpler form that communicates the increasing availability of the commodity. By the mid-eighteenth century, small circular dishes supported by diminutive cast feet, such as this pair by Joseph Edwards, Jr., became popular.

Related examples: These salt dishes, characteristic of the period, are the only ones recorded from Joseph Edwards’s shop.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff.  American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.