Ahh summer. As the weather heats up, we want to keep cool. Today marks the first day of summer. This antique 4-sectioned ice cream mold, made by S & Co. , produces a cold, sweet high-rise ice cream building. The pewter mold, marked #1113, measures 4.25 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide and 2 inches deep. The eBay seller used play-dough in the mold to demonstrate what the final product would resemble - an unidentified high rise building with a tower. Looks to me like it could be a hotel. If anyone knows the identity of the structure, let me know. It sold recently for $257.48 Unlike today, when we are happy to eat ice cream out of a cone or cup, a few centuries ago people wanted their desserts to resemble something. I found some information about the history of shaped ice cream on a site named Food Timeline: "In the 1800s ice cream served at fancy parties was often molded into festive shapes. This was a borrowed tradition from molded puddings and custards. By the Victorian era, ice cream was often pressed into molds which produced elegant, elaborate frozen desserts. Some of the ice cream creations (bombes, etc.) had fillings, usually fruit. Many of these combined biscuits and other cakes. In 19th century American cookbooks, "ice cream cake" had several definitions," the website reports. The book, 300 Years of Kitchen Collectibles by Linda Campbell Franklin, 4th edition (p. 219-231), contains information about ice cream molds. "Most ice cream molds are somewhat soft, gray, heavy metal called "pewter," although it's not the same proportionate mix of metals used in the eighteenth century for plates and hollowware...The molds are mostly two-part, hinged and heavy, or relatively thick, so that they would hold the cold temperature longer while un-molding the ice cream...Some molds achieved their full effect only when accompanied by "decorations" of composition, printed paper or wire--such as leaves, stems, hats, golf clubs, flags, sails and tablewares. Krauss and also Jo-Lo (mold makers) offer these in their 1930s catalogs." A while back, I also wrote about architectural chocolate molds.
1 comment:
I came across an ice cream mold about 10 years ago of a hotel that no longer stands in Philadelphia, a friend of the family collected and sold both ice cream and chocolate molds and I eventually sold it to her because of the difficulty it provided in displaying. At the time she had been collecting and selling molds for over 20 years and had not seen the one I had. In her collection she had various catalogs made by the companies that provided the molds. The one catalog featured a page of various buildings the company had produced and that was how I was able to identify my building. The business is now run by the families son, and offers molds at various antique shows and online. They offer reprints of the catalogs that I used to identify my replica. www.dadsfollies.com
Mark M.
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