D 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.

Cooking Utensils.

Besides pots and pans there are many cooking utensils which may now be
reckoned among the domestic curios. There are, of course, ewers and
basins, water-carrying and retaining vessels, and colanders of brass and
earthenware, strainers and graters which have been used from time to
time in the kitchen. Sometimes the metal worker appears to have gone out
of the way to produce curious forms not always the most convenient for
the purposes for which they were made--such, for instance, as the
aquamaniles, several of which may be seen in the Br