19/08/2026
An extremely rare Silver Gilt Standing Salt from the English Renaissance c.1550.
The gilt base stands on three little ball feet. There is a central rock crystal tube inside which there is the gilt figure of Longinus, the Roman soldier who, according to legend, pierced Christ in the side with his spear to hasten his death when he was on the cross.
The rock crystal was almost certainly recycled from an earlier Catholic object. As Hugh Tait, a former curator at the British Museum, has observed, the large number of objects from the English Renaissance incorporating rock crystal suggests that this is rare, valuable material was salvaged by goldsmiths from Catholic Monstrances, reliquaries and other such religious objects that had been seized and broken up during the Reformation.
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