Salver
A salver is a flat heavy tray of silver, other metal or glass used for carrying or serving glasses, cups, and dishes at a table, or for the presenting of a letter or card by a servant.[1] In a royal or noble household the fear of poisoning led to the custom of tasting the food or beverage before it was served to the master and his guests; this was known as the assay of meat and drink, and in Spanish was called salva.
The verb salvar means to preserve from risk, from the Latin salvare, to save. The term salva was also applied to the dish or tray on which the food or drink was presented after the tasting process.[2] There seems no doubt that this Spanish word is the source of the English salver; a parallel is found in the origin of the term credenza, which comes from Italian.
Ceremonial salvers have also been used as major sporting trophies, most notably a sterling silver salver as the Ladies' Singles trophy in the Wimbledon tennis championships since 1886,[3] and since 1978, for the runner-up at the Masters golf tournament.
Design
In the United States, salvers underwent a design change during the mid-18th century. Salvers with scroll-and-shell rims fell out of style during the 1760s and 1770s, replaced with gadrooned serpentine rims.[4]
References
- ^ Pope, Arthur Upham; Wiet, Gaston (November 1933). "A Seljuk Silver Salver". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 63 (368): 222-225+229.
- ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0199206872.
- ^ "The Championships, Wimbledon 2018 - Official Site by IBM". aeltc2010.wimbledon.org.
- ^ "Salver, American, 1760–70". The Met. Retrieved 10 August 2025.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Salver". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 102.