Enjoying the Sweetmeats...

At the conclusion of the second or dessert course of the dinner meal in the late colonial British North America, the dishes and tablecloth were removed. Dishes of nuts, sweetmeats, fruit, and bottles of wine were then placed on the bare table. This was generally the time when toasts were offered.

Sweetmeats are delicacies such as candied fruits and nuts or sugared pastries.

These delicacies were served in their own dishes, many of which survive in museum collections today. This particular sweetmeat dish or pickle shell was probably made in Liverpool circa 1760 and is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.

It is made of tin-glazed earthenware (delft). The shallow molded dish in the shape of a scallop shell with three stilt feet and has shell ribs visible on the underside. The bluish tin glaze is decorated in blue with a Chinese landscape and a pagoda. This example is 3 7/8" wide, 3 3/8 long and 7/8" high.

Shell-shaped sweetmeat dishes like this were produced in a variety of materials including English porcelain, tortoiseshell, earthenware, and white salt-glazed stoneware. A pair of these dishes identical in size, form, and color is in the Colonial Williamsburg collection.

This particular example was copied by Oud Delft of Nijmegen, Holland for Williamsburg Restoration for a number of years, the sales of these reproductions assisting in the work at Colonial Williamsburg.

There are slight variations from the original, with the copy being slightly smaller with a 3 3/4" width. But even with the differences, it is one of the finest reproductions of a mid-18th Century sweetmeat dish produced. And even though it is no longer being produced, these can still be found about in antique shops for reasonable prices.

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