Family keepsake grows into seasoned collection
Selcourt resident Anna-Mari Botes (56) shows off her unbridled enthusiasm for salt and pepper shakers.
Selcourt resident Anna-Mari Botes (56) shows off her unbridled enthusiasm for salt and pepper shakers.
Apart from the shakers being an unexpected collection from her late mother, she also kept some of her mother’s pre-loved teaspoon sets.
However, her condimental salt and pepper shaker collection tops them all – at a conservative estimate, she has at least 81 sets from different parts of the world.
Some shakers are from the Kruger National Park, Australia, Portugal, and England.
Anna-Mari’s shaker collections are not hidden in boxes like many collections but displayed in a dining room unit, drawing the most attention when you enter her home.
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She took her oldest set as a keepsake after her mother passed on, making it a family heirloom.
Anna-Mari reminisces about when she moved from Springs to Richards Bay, saying her house had an open-plan kitchen where the set was on top of her microwave.
“A friend who stayed next door to me visited me, and when she saw the shakers, she asked me where I had gotten them from, and I told her they were my mother’s,” she said.
“To my surprise, a month later, on my birthday, she gifted me with a country living house-shaped ceramic salt and pepper shaker set.
“She told me I should pair up my mother’s set, so it is not lonely anymore.
“And that is where my collection started; everyone started getting me shakers for my birthday. It all started by coincidence. I never meant to start a collection, and most are very sentimental because they are from family and friends.”
Her other favourite shakers were also from her mother, who had acquired them on her travels to Victoria Falls.
“They made them of deer horns and matamba Zimbabwe’s wild fruit,” she said.
The most recent collection Anna-Mari received was a blue and white windmill set from another friend in the Netherlands who had visited South Africa.
Although she loves them all, her most cherished set, which includes ceramic XO hugs and kisses set, were gifts from her sons.
Anna-Mari says she adores her salt and pepper sets because they are small collections that don’t take up a lot of room, as they are neatly packed in her cupboard.
