This is the only hexagonal-shaped salt known from the Elizabethan period. It has the same maker’s mark as a standing bowl (Si4] with the date letter for 1554, and it seems quite likely that the two pieces were acquired together.

The College inventories show that this piece once had a cover, surmounted by a figure (probably similar in appearance to the one on the Vyvyan Salt in the V&A). In an inventory from 1604 it was described as a ‘smaller salt gylt with a manekyn on the cover broken’. By 1609 it was a simply a ‘gylt salt without a cover’.

Literature: Percy MacQuoid, ‘The Plate of Winchester College’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 2, no. 5 (July 1903), p. 156, plate IIIb; W.W. Watts, Old English Silver (London, 1924), p. 42, plate 20c; Charles Oman, ‘The Winchester College Plate’, The Connoisseur (January, 1962), p. 27 (illustrated); Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 287.

Provenance: Unknown, first recorded in 1604

Location: Treasury, Gallery 1