Pugin's breadtray design brilliantly combines a rustic medievalism with a sophisticated pattern and decorative technique in an object still widely admired and sought after today.

A sturdy unglazed charger is inlaid with clays of varying colors--brownish red, buff, dark blue--each color extending into the depth of the slab ensuring a durable beauty. The pattern itself is a stylized treatment of blossoms, leaves, vines, and wheat heads that forms a unified emblem in the gothic spirit. In addition to contrasting clay colors, the surface is enriched by contrasting surface textures and subtle variations in the depth of the surface. Archaic letters in the border present the motto "Waste Not Want Not."

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, architect, designer, historian and theorist, is acknowledged as the leading figure of the gothic revival movement in England, and a key figure in the progression of nineteenth century design. His bread tray for Minton came toward the end of his short, but productive, life and represents an adaptation of the technique for producing patterned floor tiles already employed in Pugin's decorative schemes for the Houses of Parliament. The tray also demonstrates Pugin's mastery as a flat pattern maker, here adapting plant forms in a design that speaks to his antiquarian interests as well as his devotion to nature.

Frequently illustrated in publications and included in numerous major museum collections, the Pugin Bread Tray is one of the most recognizable of Pugin's works. The tray, according to scholar Paul Atterbury is "now widely accepted as an icon of Victorian gothic design" (Pugin: A Gothic Passion 1994).