Two years ago, retired Greeley interior designer Sharon Farr learned that her family line can be traced back to the medieval King Charlemagne.
It made sense to this longtime collector of silver serving pieces, Chinese mother of pearl gambling counters, Victorian hats and most especially, Victorian pickle and sugar castors. Farr describes herself as one of those people who can walk into a store and instantly gravitate toward its most regal stock.
“You can’t help but bring with you what you maybe were used to in a past life,” she says with a playful nod toward her blue-blood lineage.
It was forty years ago when Farr, 67, first fell in love with castors — ornate glass serving pieces framed in sterling silver and adorned with matching forks or tongs. The Colorado native once hosted a lavish Titanic party where guests received party announcements on stationery from the Titanic Historical Society, and invitations that looked like boarding passes. They were assigned specific characters to play and dress up as, and served 11 courses of period food.
Given her knack for being the perfect hostess, Farr finds herself drawn to collectibles that characterize past social graces and serving customs.
“It’s a disease,” she says of her passion for castors. She has about 55 pieces. She keeps them in a backlit cabinet built just for the collection, inside the Victorian-themed parlor at the front of the custom-built contemporary house she shares with her husband, banker Bill Farr.
To educate a novice about antique castors, she sits in a Victorian chair covered in forest green velvet, next to an abundance of ornate gold picture frames displayed on a marble table. Two pairs of tiny, elegantly embroidered silk Chinese shoes worn more than a century ago by women with bound feet are perched on the nearby mantel.
And while this collector has long allowed the thrill of the hunt to lead her to any number of historical oddities, it’s the pickle and sugar castors that she really adores.
“You collect these for the silver plate company represented, and the art glass,” Farr says of the castors, which have appreciated since she began hoarding them to between $2,000 and $3,000 apiece. “They really exemplify the Victorian spirit.”
All of them are American-made, but serious collectors like Farr warn that reproductions are common.
