The lady of the house often used condiments as the centerpiece for her table in the Victorian era. The glass of this era was beautiful with many different colors and designs to compliment her other table settings. We have been fascinated with the many different patterns of salt shakers for several years and have collected many of the condiment sets. This article will show some of the condiment sets she had at her disposal.

In addition to the more familiar metal holder sets containing several condiment bottles, smaller condiment sets were available. Some were cruet sets consisting of salt, pepper and a vinegar cruet on a glass tray. These sometimes also included a toothpick holder. More frequently found were condiment sets consisting of a salt, pepper and mustard pot, normally on a matching glass base. We have limited this article to sets with glass bases. Most of the sets have matching stand alone salt and pepper shakers. The bases are different in that they are flat without a ring to fit into the condiment base. We show some of these for comparison. At the end of this article we show a table that is our attempt to provide the reader with a guide to collecting these sets.

Two companies, Consolidated Lamp and Glass Company and Dithridge & Sons, made the more popular sets. These two companies were the leaders in producing colored opalware salt and pepper shakers. 

The two most commonly found Dithridge condiment sets have been named Creased Bale and Bulging Teardrop by Peterson in his classic books on salt shakers. Attribution to Dithridge of these sets is based upon shakers shown in an 1894 advertisement by Dithridge and Sons. See Peterson, p180. The condiment shakers for these sets were also sold individually as stand alone shakers. These sets are known in White, Pink, Blue, and Custard opalware. It is interesting to note that all 10 of the shakers shown in the advertisement are known in these colors. All of these colors but the pink Creased Bale are homogeneous single layer glass. The pink Creased Bale items are cased glass, consisting of a thin inner layer of white opalware. Several manufacturing firms used cased glass for the pink color to get a lighter softer pink color. On the other hand, the Bulging Teardrop pink sets are a deeper, richer pink color. One author reports that these sets both came in green. Neither of these sets nor any of the shakers in the 1894 advertisement have been reported in green. We suspect that these were both errors. Any color but those shown would be extremely rare.