Maker: Spode  Pattern: Italian

This dish was designed for those, who took their salads in high style, and is specifically for serving a complete sliced cucumber. The shape is amazing, ridged and indented, apparently to replicate a cucumber plant leaf, but in a much elongated form. At 15.75 ins very elongated!
The dish is recorded in the Spode catalogue of the day as Ameer shape, which is an old alternative spelling of Emir, an eastern ruler. These dishes are extremely rare and Andrew Richards, collector and publisher of The Italian Collector, has recorded only two surviving Ameer cucumber dishes in thirty years of research, so this makes number three.
The glaze has light crazing, from it would appear simply age, as there is no staining and it is in superb condition.
Typical blue printed oval backstamp Copeland, Spode's Italian, England.

Dimensions: 40 x 10.5 cm 4 cm high / 15.75 x 4.25 ins 1.5 ins high