Queen Elizabeth’s Cellar For Royal Feast

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 172, 17 April 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

Queen Elizabeth’s Cellar For Royal Feast

People from abroad are already pouring into England for the Coronation. Most of the visitors will be from the Empire overseas, but many • will be visitors from other countries. I Very few of these, however, will be ' privileged to attend the coronation feasts at Buckingham Palace. There the Royal and Imperial guests will see gold plate at dinner which, apart from its value in money, has not its equal in the world. One thing probably everybody would like to see in use on the Royal table, the gold saltcellar that Queen Elizabeth was wont to use. The finest in existence, it is of gold, nearly two feet high, standing on an elaborate pedestal, and consisting of two tiers, or hollowed platforms, surmounted by a richly-embossed canopy borne on three beautiful curved supports. It was in use on the great queen’s table 16 years before the Armada sailed, and we may be certain that it decorated the scene at which she banqueted the victors. The magnificence of this incomparable salt-cellar is not a matter of barbaric display. Salt in Queen Elizabeth’s time was of immense importance to life and health. In November, all such domestic animals as were not to be kept for stock had to be killed and preserved. There existed a fraternity called Salters, whom Queen Elizabeth, like her father, signally honoured, for their work as the preservers of the winter food of the nation was deemed especially blessed of Providence. They still exist as a city company, but then their duties were real and important. The queen’s great salt came as the crowning successor to the ruder methods of her ancestors, when, all the inhabitants of a fortified castle having to dine together, salt was provided in a great trough cut in the wood of the table. Those who were of rank and distinction sat above the salt, near the sovereign or the baron, those of less consequence sat below it. Politer manners brought salt-cellars, and this one, which Royal visitors mtfy see on the King’s table, was the monarch of them all, the finest ever made. It would be exciting to take salt from a golden receptacle first used when Shakespeare was a little boy, and when there was not a potato in the Old World for salt to make palatable.