Salt and Pepper Shakers by Stelton
Designed c. 1960’s,
No longer in production
Stelton is a Danish home goods company known for attractive and well-designed kitchenware. These salt and pepper shakers, repainted in bold colors by set designers, were used in TOS, as medical tools in Dr. McCoy’s sick bay.
According to Gene Roddenberry in “The Making of Star Trek”: “In the very first show of our first season [The Man Trap], we needed some salt shakers because we had a creature that craved salt, we had a story point which required the creature (disguised in human form) to give himself away when someone passed with a salt shaker on a tray. This posed a problem. What will a salt shaker look like three hundred years from now? Our property master, Irving Feinberg, went out and bought a selection of very exotic-looking salt shakers. It was not until after he brought them in and showed them to me that I realized they were so beautifully shaped and futuristic that the audience would never recognize them as salt shakers. I would either have to use 20th Century salt shakers or I would have to have a character say ‘See, this is a salt shaker.’ So I told Irving to go down to the studio commissary and bring me several of their salt shakers, and as he turned to go, I said 'However, those eight devices you have there will become Dr. McCoy’s operating instruments.'”
Used in:
The Original Series
Source:
Gregory Schnitzer
