FIGS. 47, 48.—TWO WOODEN FOOD BOXES.
(In the Cardiff Museum.)
FIG. 49.—A COLLECTION OF IRON FAT BOATS AND GREASE PANS.
In "Chats on Old Copper and Brass" some very interesting illustrations of old copper and brass saucepans, skillets, and pipkins are given. The skillet has survived for several centuries. Those made in the seventeenth century were frequently inscribed with various religious and sentimental legends; one in the National Museum of Wales is inscribed "LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR." Frying pans have been in common use for a great number of years and are still daily requisitioned. Bakestones, on which cakes were formerly baked, are, however, becoming obsolete. They were called girdle plates in the North of England, and bakestones in Wales and elsewhere.
Grills and Gridirons.
The gridiron or "griddle" was an appliance used extensively all over the Continent of Europe from the sixteenth century onward. In this country it was formerly made by the village blacksmith, and, like the iron stool, kitchen fender, and other iron and brass kitchen utensils and furnishings, was often made quite decorative. It would appear as if the smith filled up his spare moments in designing intricate patterns with which to decorate the grid. Some of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century European gridirons were quite elaborate, serving the double purpose of ornament and use, for when finished with for cooking purposes they were carefully cleaned and polished and hung up over the kitchen mantelpiece. Some of the characteristic types met with are shown in the accompanying illustrations. In Fig. [43] is seen the light and lacy Italian style; in Fig. [44] the openwork design of the Flemish; a formal Dutch pattern being illustrated in Fig. [45]; whereas the heavy German floreated type is shown in Fig. [46]. Contrasting with these Continental types the English gridiron was strong and serviceable, and essentially a grid or grill, the smith putting his best work in the handle rather than the grid.