Description:
Oblong-shaped cruet stand with wooden base and four leather-covered, tin bottle brackets and loop handle. The stand holds four blown blue glass condiment bottles decorated with a painted gold chain around neck of each bottle that "suspends" a label with the name of the ingredient: "KYAN," "KETCHUP," "SOY," and "F. SAUCE." In 18th-century America, ketchup more closely resembled Worcestershire sauce or steak sauce than modern-day tomato ketchup. This highly seasoned recipe was often made with walnuts or mushrooms, and vinegar or ale. Cyan Sauce combined apple cider vinegar with cayenne peppers and other spices to make a fiery hot sauce. The basic Soy Sauce recipe called for fermented soy beans mixed with grain (either wheat or barley) and then combined with mold and salt. Fermented fish formed the basis of Fish Sauce, which was mainly used as a sauce over meat or as flavoring in soup. For the possible attribution to Bristol, England, for the glass bottles refer to similar blue glass cruet bottles created at the Wadham Ricketts & Co., Phoenix Glasshouse, circa 1798. The base of this Ketchup bottle is acid etched "W R & Co 1798" and is similar to one in the collection of the Bristol City Art Gallery. The EH Williams 1838 probate inventory listed: "1 Wood frame Caster ... .50." Condition: Leather-covered stand is in extremely fragile condition and needs to be conserved, one of the tinned sheet iron loops for the cruet bottles has become detached on one side.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+83.006 |
