On a train trip to the country late last year, I found this small glass dish at an rural op shop. It is small, measuring 116mm or just over 4.5 inches. The fluted design is on the outside and it has a polished foot rim.
It was intended to be used as a bath, seed or water dish for small caged birds such as canaries, budgies or zebra finches.
It appears in Crown Crystal’s 1932 catalogue alongside other feeders and waterers/drinkers designed to clip onto the side of a cage.
I showed it to my 95-year-old grandmother and she instantly recognised it from the bottom of bird cages when she was growing up.
While you can get much more modern and complicated bird baths nowadays, you can still get essentially the same oval bath in plastic.
The powerhouse museum has a few examples of these bird baths in their collection attributed to Crown Crystal, both from the Crown Crystal collection and outside of it.
For such a simple oval dish, it has quite a specific intended use. And one that you would not really be able to guess from the item itself unless you already happen to know.