Wooden Framed Prattware Pot Lid Entitled "Fording the Stream"

Offered for sale is a very nice Mid 19th Century Prattware pot lid, entitled “Fording the Stream”, and catalogued as No. 335 in Ball’s A.C.C. Price Guide. it depicts a bucolic country scene in the mid 19th century. It was Felix Edward Pratt (1813-94) who spotted the commercial possibilities of using new printing technology to decorate the lids of containers for popular products such as bear's grease, gentleman's relish, potted shrimps and cosmetics, with sophisticated designs. After 1840, F. & R. Pratt of Fenton in Staffordshire, became the leading (but not the only) manufacturer of multicoloured transfer printed pot lids and a huge range of related wares. Long admired for their technical excellence, for their sheer variety and as a social and historical record of their era, pot lids have a venerable collecting history and rank among the most desirable everyday items from the Victorian period.