BONNIE'S SALT SHAKER

Kitchen objects don’t need to be expensive to be precious. The tomato-shaped salt shaker in this photo probably cost about ten cents back in the 1930s. It may have come from Woolworths or another low-cost shop. But its owner, Bonnie Slotnick, describes it as her most prized kitchen possession because it reminds her so strongly of her mother who died when Bonnie was just fourteen. ‘If I break this, something is going to end’, she told me when describing the salt shaker.

One of the reasons I am so excited to be going to New York next week is that next Saturday (15th November)I will finally meet the great Bonnie Slotnick of @bonnieslotnickcookbooks (which, if you don’t know it, is a shop unlike any other). When I interviewed Bonnie for THE HEART-SHAPED TIN, we could only talk via video call. She explained that no salt shaker in the world could replace this little tomato one made from ceramic in a factory in Japan. Everything about it, including the cheery red colour, reminded her of her beloved mother, who never left the house without red lipstick and dangling earrings.

Bonnie’s shop - which I visited in 2024 - feels like stepping into a time capsule where electric whisks were a novelty and cookbooks with colour photos were not the norm. It sells old cookbooks and kitchenalia you won’t find anywhere else. Many of the items belong to a world that is comforting to Bonnie - a world before her mother died. Most of the books are carefully wrapped in cellophane and you can find treasures such as vintage cake stands and ‘uncommon eggbeaters’.

Bonnie has kept this salt shaker safe for nearly sixty years since her mother died. You can only put regular fine table salt in it - the holes in the top are too small for flaky salt. But regular salt is just fine because it’s what Bonnie’s mother used.