Muffineer

He was sitting at his table by the light of a solitary candle, with a pen in one hand, and a muffineer in the other, with which he occasionally sprinkled salt on the wick, to make it burn blue.

The handled spice dredger was superseded during the 1760s by the handleless caster used for cinnamon and known to collectors as the muffineer, a name brought into use for such a caster early in the nineteenth century.

The piece was an eighteenth-century silver muffineer, or sugar shaker.