Antique Glass Salts between £0 and £0
Small open glass dishes for serving salt at table, sold singly, in pairs and in sets, along with the cruet frames and condiment stands built to hold them.
What Are Antique Glass Salts?
Salt went on the table in small open dishes from at least the 17th century, and glass versions followed from the 18th century onward, cut, moulded or coloured. Many were made as liners to sit inside a pierced silver mount, and cruet frames carrying matching bottles and salts grew up beside them as one table fitting.
The piece you're most likely to meet is a cut-glass open salt offered as a pair. "Pair" appears in 25 of 71 titles on Sellingantiques and "cut" in 23, with trios and sets of four, six and ten also turning up. Boat salts, pedestal and standing salts, trencher salts and turnover rims all appear by name.
Coloured glass makes up the next big group, and cranberry leads it by a wide margin. Amethyst, amber, green, vaseline, ruby, Bohemian overlay and opaline each show up only once or twice. Silver or silver plate is involved in 22 titles, whether as a mount, a frame or a matching spoon, so it cuts across the other groups.
Cruet sets and stoppered bottles sit in the same heading. Cruets are counted by bottle, from five-piece up to a seven-bottle Georgian frame and an eight-piece oval stand, and a small run of scent and smelling-salts bottles means "salt" in a title can mean the bottle rather than the dish. Dating is often loose: Victorian and Georgian dominate, era labels are common, and titles sometimes disagree with the dealer's own dated field, so read the circa date in the title alongside it.
Range And Ranking
Completeness does most of the work. Single salts hold the bottom of the range, pairs run through the middle, and trios, sets of four and six and multi-bottle cruets climb from there. A set of ten French green opaline scallop-shell dishes with gilt edges sits alone at the top.
Then it's the working of the glass. Hand-cut examples in heavy lead crystal, hobnail cut, draped swag designs and fitted cut saucers sit above plain and moulded salts. Within the coloured group, plain cranberry sits low while gilded and enamelled, cranberry-flashed, Bohemian overlay and opaline pieces sit well above.
Silver lifts a salt too. Mounted and silver-topped glass, plated frames and silver gilt spoons all push up, and several carry assay towns and years: Exeter 1863, Chester 1896, Birmingham 1900, and London 1755/6 on a George II pair with blue glass liners. Named early forms do the same, and they turn up once each: a font salt, a reverse-painted trencher pair, a double-ogee bonnet glass with blue rim, an orange-rimmed moulded salt. Irish cut glass is claimed twice, both times Georgian.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for glass salts between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The cellar in salt cellar has nothing to do with cellars. It comes from the French saliere, a vessel for salt.
The Antique Glass Salts between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Open salt
- An uncovered small dish for salt, taken with a spoon or the fingers. Also called a salt cellar.
- Liner
- The glass insert that sits inside a pierced silver or plated mount, often clear or blue.
- Cruet set
- A frame or stand holding matching glass bottles and salts, counted by bottles: five, six, seven or eight piece.
- Condiment stand
- The frame itself, commonly silver plated, that carries the bottles and salts.
- Master salt
- A larger salt for shared use at table, as against the small individual ones.
- Double ogee bowl
- A bowl profile of two reversed curves, as on the Georgian bonnet glass form.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are glass salts usually sold in pairs?
Pairs are the commonest offering. The word "pair" appears in 25 of 71 titles in the Sellingantiques archive, ahead of singles, trios and larger sets.
Sets of four, six and ten also appear, and cruets are counted by their bottles instead: five-piece, six-bottle, seven-bottle and an eight-piece oval stand.
What colours do coloured salts come in?
Cranberry dominates, named in around a fifth of titles. It runs from plain examples through gilded and enamelled and cranberry-flashed work.
Everything else is thin on the ground. Amethyst, amber, green, vaseline or uranium, ruby, Bohemian overlay and green opaline each appear only once or twice.
Why do some listings mention silver hallmarks?
Silver or silver plate is paired with the glass in 22 of the 71 titles, whether that's a pierced mount holding a glass liner, a plated cruet frame, or a matching salt spoon.
The silver element is what carries the marks. Named assay years include London 1755/6 on a George II pair, Exeter 1863, Chester 1896 and Birmingham 1900.
How old are most antique glass salts?
The dealers' dated fields span 1800 to 1920. Victorian and Georgian labels dominate the titles, with 19th Century, Edwardian and 18th Century behind them.
The earliest specific claim is a Georgian bonnet glass given as English c1760. The latest is a five-piece Art Deco cruet cut in heavy lead crystal, filed to 1920 and the only Art Deco entry in the set.
Does a salt bottle mean the same as a salt dish?
No. Alongside the open table dishes sits a small run of stoppered bottles: double-ended scent bottles, a silver-topped cased scent bottle, a cased silver-mounted salts bottle.
So "salt" in a title can point to a smelling-salts bottle rather than a vessel for table salt. The rest of the description makes clear which.
Which forms turn up least often?
Several appear exactly once: a font salt, a reverse-painted trencher pair, a Bohemian overlay salt tub, a double-ogee bonnet glass with blue rim, and an orange-rimmed moulded salt.
Irish cut glass is claimed twice, both times as Georgian. Boat, pedestal and standing forms are the more regular shapes.