Ice cream tray, 14 x 8 x 2 inches. Brown transfer with gilding. Impressed maker's mark for Josiah Wedgwood. Impressed three-letter code gives a production date of 1882. In c. 1880-1883, Thomas Allen designed a series of images for tiles and dinnerware for Josiah Wedgwood. Some of the designs were included as a series of 7 subjects intended for tiles known as "Hats." Each illustrated a child in a different hat, contained within a oval, oblong, or lemon-shape, and set against a background of flower sprigs and sprays. Thomas Allen also designed a series of 4 subjects known as "Cameo Heads." No source lists all eleven designs, but it seems some at least were interchangeable. This pattern features a lemon-shaped cameo with a background of oranges and leaves and the bust of a young boy in a feathered hat superimposed above. Behind the cameo are several sprigs of wild roses and clover.

Josiah Wedgwood was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, on July 12, 1730, into a family with a long tradition as potters. At the age of nine, after the death of his father, he worked in his family's pottery. In 1759 he set up his own pottery works in Burslem. There he produced a highly durable cream-colored earthenware that so pleased Queen Charlotte that in 1762 she appointed him royal supplier of dinnerware. From the public sale of Queen's Ware, as it came to be known, Wedgwood was able, in 1768, to build near Stoke-on-Trent a village, which he named Etruria, and a second factory equipped with tools and ovens of his own design. At first only ornamental pottery was made in Etruria, but by 1773 Wedgwood had concentrated all his production facilities there. During his long career Wedgwood developed revolutionary ceramic materials, notably basalt and jasperware. After Wedgwood's death in Etruria on January 3, 1795, his descendants carried on the business, which still produces many of his designs.