Tips for Collecting Circular Funnels
The cake funnel, also known as a cake fan or cake bird as Americans like to call it, is a late Victorian utensil. They were designed to prevent juices from spilling onto the crust or oven floor and also to support the pie crust from sagging.
The first recorded cake funnel was made in 1880 by Dean and Morris and was made in three sizes. Since then, 44 different patents and registered designs have been registered in Great Britain and many of these can still be purchased today. One of the earliest recorded figures was a blackbird, registered in 1933 in Australia by Grace Seccombe as a Pie Crust Lifter. A J Wilkinson (Clarice Cliff) trademarked a blackbird funnel design in 1936 and many of these were produced, including the white wartime version; some were stamped Wilkinson, Newport Pottery or, later, Midwinter.
Before the advent of the cake funnel, people would have used an egg cup or even a macaroon bar. As cakes come in different sizes and depths, so do funnels, and were often produced in sets. Among these assemblies are Adcock Crust Support, Ventilator and Fountain. These early funnels often had wide chimneys to vent steam under the crust, but also to add extra broth to the pie during the long, slow cooking process.
If you want to collect cake funnels, you’re in luck, as once upon a time every household in Britain would have had one or more of these. As diet and cooking styles have changed over the last twenty years, the cake funnel is no longer an everyday item and is probably stuck somewhere in the back of a cupboard or drawer.
Some cake funnels have fetched pretty high prices, but you should be able to start a collection for a small amount of money. Check your local auctions and car trunk sales and you should be able to get some of the simple pie funnels pretty cheap. You may also want to check online auction sites as they are helpful in researching prices.
Some of the famous china manufacturers, including Spode, Royal Worcester, Denby, Shelley and Grimwade, have produced cake funnels commercially, but it was Grimwade that produced the widest variety of designs, five of which are patented or registered. These included the ‘Elephant Cake Funnel/Ring Stand’, which was produced in white and grey, to the latest ‘Bleriot Pie Divider’ produced in three different sizes, which separated the cake pan into two parts so that two meats or fruit can be baked in the same pie. Each of these dividers came with their own specific patented cake plate.
Grimwade produced ‘The Improved Cake Funnel’ and it is quite rare and sold so well that an updated version was produced and named ‘The Improved Popular Cake Funnel’. These came in various sizes, heralding early grocers and china as well as department stores around the world, from Moose Jaw’s TW Robinson Co Ltd in Canada to Ritchies of Dunedin in New Zealand, as well as across the UK. .
While most cake funnels are made from ceramic, there is also a large selection made from Pyrex glass, aluminum, and plastic. Most of the early examples were produced commercially by larger potters making a wide range of white pottery, but later smaller potters produced limited editions of true works of art. At the forefront was Stuart Bass, who has produced more than 300 different designs since the mid-1970s.
A book called British Pie Funnels has been produced to try to fill in some of the gaps related to the traditional British pie funnel, as little has been written on the subject. This provides a useful background for any new or experienced collector and some of the illustrations should prove helpful in identifying the various pieces.