Copper Culinary Mould ‘Fruit and Flowers’

Late Victorian

Circa 1900 | France

An antique large and heavy copper culinary mould embossed with fruit and flowers. This mould would have been used for making an impressive centrepiece for a banquet table and was likely made in France. The highly decorative food popular during the Victorian era would have not been possible without the invention of copper moulds (see The Gen).

DIMENSIONS: Diameter 29 cm, Height 5.5 cm.

SIGNATURES, MARKINGS & INSCRIPTIONS: Unmarked.

CONDITION: In very good condition, wear consistent with an antique age and use. No evident restoration. The copper has a lovely rosy patina. A great decorative item in its current condition.

All my antique copper comes in as found ‘unrestored’ condition with the years of history retained in the lovely patina created by surface marks made by ordinary kitchen use. The choice then becomes yours whether to have the item polished, or the tin relined, and a decorative item can once more become a treasured new kitchen utensil to be loved and used by a new gen. At times an item may already have been lovingly polished by a previous owner and the copper will show off its rosy glow. Whether polished or not, the patina adds to the history of the item and wonder of the stories it could tell.

REFERENCES: For a similar mould see The Victorian Kitchen, Jennifer Davies, BBC Books, 1989, p. 63. See also an example of a similar mould that was auctioned in a group lot at Bonhams on 13 February 2024, Lot 172.

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THE GEN

“The Renaissance had decorated foods, although I don’t believe the fancy copper molds typical of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were yet in existence. By 1800 or so, households of French, Italian, English, German, Russian (and undoubtedly Austrio-Hungarian and Swedish) nobility could count hundreds of copper molds (or “shapes” as the English called them) in their batteries de cuisine. When there was a surplus of money, food and servants, and hours spent at the banquet table were considered hours well-spent, no decoration was considered excessive, no frou-frou frivolous. So what if guests only nibbled? The servants or the pigs could eat the leftovers. Confined to noble households until the early 19th century, thereafter highly decorated food became fashionable among wealthy merchant and professional classes.

By the 1870s, molds were considered necessary in every middle class kitchen. Chromolithography’s advent in the early 1880s meant that cookbooks could have sumptuous, scrumptious full-page pictures, showing what food in the recipes should look like, including towering molded, decorated main courses and side dishes. While we might find it intimidating to face a foot-high molded aspic, quivering on its crystal stand, pictures would lead you to believe that the Victorians loved it.” (300 Years of Kitchen Collectibles, Linda Campbell Franklin, Krause Publications, 5th Edition, 2003, p. 178)

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