James Keiller & Son's Dundee Marmalade Stoneware Pot Sugar UK Croydon 4.5" Tall

Description: It was in Janet Keiller's 18th century Dundee, Scotland kitchen that the first batch of modern marmalade was born. Thanks to a ship that had gone the wrong way, her husband obtained a crate of Seville oranges long overripe and bitter. By boiling the unsweetened citrus fruits in sugar while retaining the grated rind of the orange itself, Janet re-invented marmalade, once called “marmalato.” Quickly, she decided to sell her sweet and tangy spread in her husband’s village store. Their son took over the store in the nineteenth century renaming it James Keiller & Son Ltd. Only in 1867 did marmalade become the predominant company product. A few years earlier, Christopher Thompson Maling II, took over the family pottery business, Maling Pottery, in Newcastle, U.K. and devised a way to make stoneware pottery containers by machine, rather than by hand. His ceramic containers were sold by the hundreds of thousands to the food industry in general and to James Keiller & Son in particular. Keiller’s Marmalade became one of his most important customers with sales reaching into the millions of pots annually. In 1919, after the end of World War I, the Keiller family sold the business to Crosse & Blackwell, a growing global food company with dominance in a number of areas, soon to include marmalade. In 1928, the new owner substituted glass jars for the stoneware pots in the United Kingdom but not for export sales, which continued to use the traditional pots. In 1960, Nestles in turn bought the Keiller’s brand from Crosse & Blackwell and continued marmalade production in Dundee and use of ceramic pots for their export sales. Exactly who made the ceramic pots after 1928 is not clear. The pot’s offered today can be identified as being made during the Nestles’ period (1960-1981) from the addition of the word “Croydon” to the label (Croydon being the location of the headquarters of Nestles in the U.K. at that time). We know from the impressed words on the bottom that the pot was made in the U.K., but not by whom (The Maling Pottery ceased business in 1963). Keiller’s Dundee Orange Marmalade ceramic pots are valued throughout the English-speaking world for their sturdy good looks and their handiness as containers for every imaginable little domestic item. A French firm today is even making reproductions! Get the real thing now!

Price: 50 USD

Location: Weston, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-08-16T19:08:14.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD