Collection Online
Covered casserole with liner
Medium
stoneware (caneware)
Measurements
(a-c) 13.6 × 22.6 × 16.4 cm (overall)
Place/s of Execution
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England
Inscription
(a) impressed (inverted) in base u.l.: WEDGWOOD / O
impressed in base u.l.: BBY
Accession Number
2024.393.a-c
Department
International Decorative Arts
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Patricia Begg OAM Bequest, 2024
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work

This dish and the one below are made from a ceramic body called ‘caneware’ developed by Wedgwood in the 1790s in order to imitate pastry. Such dishes do not appear in Wedgwood’s invoices until 1795, but the impetus is thought to have come earlier from founder Josiah Wedgwood’s friend Richard Lovell Edgworth, who requested ‘oval baking dishes in the form of raised paste pies … made of cane-coloured ware’. Such dishes were extremely popular in the 1790s due to flour shortages. The pie dish has an internal glazed liner, which would have contained the casserole that was baked in the oven. The outer dish and cover are decorated in reliefs of grapevine swags with game-bird trophies and a rabbit forming the knop of the cover.