As rare as hens teeth, a 'Conceit' is a ceramic object designed to look like a cake, set on the table to give the appearance of there being more food than there is. Conceived, designed and produced by Josiah Wedgwood, a fabulous innovator of table presentation ware, but more popularly known for his cameos and dinner sets.  The irony here is that if you could afford Wedgewood's ware, then you could afford to put food on the table. Unless, of course, one's priorities were different.

During the war years, in the living memory of many, a wedding or celebration cake was also a rare thing. Instead, a box would be iced with plaster of paris, and a more modest cake put underneath, and as the time came to cut the cake, the box would be removed. So, the appearance of food more symbolic and for display, rather than for consumption. Wedding cakes were highly nutritious, preserving fruit with sugar and alcohol, providing long term sustainance, as well as the tradition of the top layer of the cake kept to celebrate the Christening of the first child.

This is a poppy seed knot with a Conceit. The circular windows are for display, as a fully enclosed box would also serve as a dust cover for any ornament on the cake for eating. This is my first foray into royal icing and it's lovely stuff to work with, but strong hands are needed to ice a very stiff mixture of egg and sugar. In it's state of whiteness, before a tint was applied, it looked like a folly, or mausoleum, or one of those above-ground burial chambers in New Orleans. Colours fashionable at the time of Wedgwoods' original Conceits are gorgeous - milky, warm sugar almond Neoclassical tints of pigs-blood pink, mossy-minty green and duck egg blue. Lovely.