George Jones - Serving dish - Clay - Majolica dish and cover

A fine and extremely rare mid-19th C George Jones majolica covered dish.
The eel handle is unusual and indicates that this is an eel dish used exclusively for serving what today is the rare delicacy known as Collared Eel. (For more information on collared eel and how it was accommodated in this sort of dish see:
Blogs.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook/to-collar-an-eel/index). Eels were commonly eaten by the working class poor of Victorian East London when eels from the river Thames were cheap and plentiful. That Mister Jones should have made an eel dish using expensive majolica lead glazes begs the question: who among those poor working class East Londoners could have afforded one? That my internet searches to date have found only one other example suggests he didn't make too many, those of his clients who could have afforded one no doubt preferring caviar - a dish for which Mister Jones appears not to have applied his skills. Apart from the firing crack to the eel's head the dish is perfect and appears never to have been used.
Measurements:
Base 19cm diam. Cover 12cm diam by 8.25cm high.
Weight for double-boxed postage 750g.