One of my all-time favorite things to collect is vintage salt and pepper shakers. They’re colorful, quirky, relatively inexpensive, and they don’t take up too much space – what more could you ask for? I’ve been collecting them for years, and though my collection isn’t gigantic, I absolutely LOVE every single one of my treasured pairs.
Which is why I was absolutely ecstatic when I was contacted by someone at Martha Stewart Online to write a story about the history of vintage salt and pepper shakers, as well as some tips and tricks for starting your own collection! I’m sharing oodles of interesting facts and plenty of pictures of my prized collection over on the Martha Stewart website – click HERE to check it out!
What an interesting article! Congratulations on being featured on Martha Stewart 🙂
Thanks so much, Nicole! I’m glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
I have a question about vintage salt shakers being food safe to use. Are there any concerns over such things as lead leaching out into the salt and peeper that one needs to be aware of before deciding to use any of these vintage shakers? If there are concerns, how does one know which ones to worry about? Are there ways to test these shakers for lead or other things of concern? I have bought several vintage shakers that I an planning to give as gifts to people and I want to be able to tell them if it will be safe for them to use them as actual shakers or not. I want to know if I need to tell them that they should only uses these just for display. Any help you can provide will be much appreciated.
I only recently started to collect shakers and I think I have been bitten by the shaker bug now. Tracy
Oh, I’m so happy to hear you’ve been bitten by the salt and pepper shaker bug, too! They’re so fun to collect!
As for lead, salt and pepper shakers are typically pretty safe to use. Lead was only added to paints to add richness in color, so if lead was indeed used on any of your shakers, it would’ve been used on the outside of the shakers only. If you want to double-check, you can buy lead testing kits that will tell you whether or not any lead in present. I’ve heard good things about this one from Amazon. Hope that helps!
Thank you for the helpful information. You have, indeed, helped me out! 🙂
You’re so welcome! I’m always happy to help a fellow collector! 🙂
Jarware Salt and Pepper is really nice and unique because it doesn’t make mess and doesn’t take up space. I love it because it can fit two in one and its so much better.
https://www.jarware.com/collections/
Wow! Congratulations on your feature on Martha Stewart. You have so many cute vintage S&P shakers. Our aunt left our family a collection of almost 1,000 vintage salt and pepper shakers and after years of not knowing what to do with them, we launched a little online vintage Salt and Pepper shaker boutique. Looking forward to meeting new collectors.
Your snail ones are so adorable. We’ll definitely have to check out your site more often.
http://www.janandjill.com
~Jan & Jill