Designer:  Merle Fenelon Faber (1891 – 1980)

Item: Sugar, creamer, salt and pepper shakers

Manufactured by: Merle F. Faber Products, San Francisco

Country of origin: United States

Year made: 1940s

Materials: Silverplate over brass

Dimensions: Salt/pepper 2 ½” x ¾” x 1 ¼, creamer/sugar 2 ¾” x 3 ½” x 2 ½”,tray 1” x 7 ½” x 6 ¾”

Condition: Very good overall, with light scratches and a few spots of overpolish.

Description: Here is a very hard to find complete condiment set consisting of a creamer, lidded sugar, salt and pepper shakers and the nearly impossible-to-find tray.  We have seen and handled several other pairs of creamers and sugars, but the skyscraper designed salt and pepper shakers are more difficult to find, and especially in this good condition because salt corrodes the surface.  Many of these same designs used a black or white plastic for the handles, so the silver handled versions are also more difficult to find.  A related design to the salt and pepper for candlesticks can be found illustrated in the Jewel Stern book. 

Examples of the creamer and sugar are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery.  Other pieces of Faber’s can also be found in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and others.

Faber was a mechanic and manufacturer of tools and dies by trade that produced parts for model railroads.  In 1943 he moved his company to San Francisco, and after World War II he began producing silverplated holloware.  Faber had no known design education and appears to have absorbed his design aesthetic from books and catalogs from other makers. 

References: Jewel, Modernism in American Silver: 20th Century Design, Yale University Press, 2005.