Pie-Making Tools

Pies are a particularly English form dating back to the Middle Ages. Originating throughout Europe as very deep, free-standing meat pies with tough, often inedible crusts that needed no additional support, they came to the colonies as delicate pastry pies that required shaped ceramic pie dishes, or pie plates. These were usually dinner plates of a slightly scooped, rounded shape that helped support the shallow, often sweet fillings. With the expansion of tin manufacturing in the eighteenth century, “pie plates” evolved into pieced-tin flat-bottomed pans with flared straight sides. Little jagging wheels were used to cut zigzag edges for lattice tops, and rolling corrugated crimping wheels sealed and decorated the rims of top and bottom crusts. Small hollow pie funnels, later “pie birds” in the shape of blackbirds, were inserted in the top crust to allow steam to escape. Ceramic pie birds have become a popular collectible, and editions of blackbirds, bluebirds, chefs, cartoon characters, and the like have been produced since the 1940s. One-piece rolling pins were fashioned of hard woods both on lathes and by hand and were either evenly cylindrical or tapered at both ends.