 |
|
|
|
|
|
Vintage Cake
Toppers
Recent
Article published in “The
Gilded Lily” Quarterly Newsletter May 2006 I have been collecting wedding cake toppers since 1989 and have amassed a sizable collection of over 800 pieces. Although cake toppers are made from a range of materials, my prized toppers are those made from sugar based materials. Dating from the late 1800’s to well into the 1930’s, these toppers are very rare and you can imagine the difficulty of finding one in good condition. My collection contains cake top examples from the late 1800’s into the 1980’s and includes traditional bride and grooms, sweet little kewpies, birds, and cherubs to name only a few. I am always adding a new “old” topper to my collection! Cake toppers have become very collectible and can be found in antique shops and on-line auctions. Royal Cakes It wasn’t until the 19th century that the wedding cake began evolving into what we see today. The ‘high rise” wedding cake began with the royal wedding of the 1800’s, closely resembling the cakes of the future although larger and more elaborate. The cake created for the 1840 wedding of Queen Victoria and Price Albert was a large circular plum cake decorated with mounds of sugar sculptures and roses. It was three yards in circumference and weighed almost three hindered pounds. An ice sculpture of Britannia surrounded by cupids capped the cake. Smaller cakes were distributed to the wedding guests. The spectacular multi-tiered wedding cake of Victoria’s daughter, Vicky, was documented as being between six and seven feet high. One tier was decorated with cupids holding medallions with a profile of the Princess Royal and her groom, Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. Other tiers held actual busts of the royal couple, their coasts of arms as well as the arms of Great Britain and Prussia. A middle portion contained niches with four statues, each depicting concepts such as Innocence and Wisdom. Each tier held jasmine and orange blossoms and rows of pearls bordered each division of the cake. Sitting on the top of this extraordinary cake was a crown. The Toppers There has been no documentation found to date as to when the first ‘bride and groom’ actually topped a wedding cake. However we do know a new type of one piece molded ‘cake topper’ that could be taken off the cake and saved for posterity was being mass produced in the 1890’s. Before this, American and French bakers were hand making similar types of toppers. Early cake tops could also be small dolls made of bisque or composition. America has been recognized as preceding the British in the use of these kinds of cake toppers. However, unlike Americans who predominately used cake toppers that symbolized love, and later bride and groom cake toppers, the British favored their cakes topped with posies or sprays of flowers until the early 1900’s. In Britain, as early as the mid-1800’s, a large flower vase with generous amounts of flowers could usually be found bursting out over the cake. Often these flowers and the vase were half of the total height of the cake. Sometimes these large bouquets were called the bride’s bouquet and were the same flowers the bride had carried in the ceremony. The vases were made of parian or white bisque to blend in with the whiteness of the cake. Some vases were simple while others incorporated male and female figures, horseshoes, or cherubs. During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s some of the vases and flowers were also made of gum paste or a similar type of sugar composition. Early in the 20th century bakers were separating their cake tiers with pillars so the flower arrangements became much smaller. No more bouquets billowing out covering the cake with trails of flowers and vines. A more elongated plain vase usually of silver became popular. Early in the 1900’s, artificial flower arrangements that could be saved as a memento and displayed under a glass dome became fashionable. British bakers found that the use of artificial flowers made a vase needless and opened up all kinds of possibilities for ornamentation. Symbols of love such as cherubs, doves, swans, or symbols of luck such as horseshoes and slippers began to appear on wedding cakes. Generally speaking, today’s British brides use basic smooth icing on their cakes with real, artificial, or sugar composition flowers. They top their cakes with flowers, tradition brides and grooms, or a novelty bride and groom character representative of the wedding couple. The smooth-lined elongated flower vase is a cake top ornament of the past. American brides from the (*) late 1900’s, tend to use smooth-frosted cakes embellished with artificial, real, or sugar flowers on top and/or all over the cake with very little other ornamentation. The use of tall monograms with the initials of the bride and groom are now often used on a very smooth-frosted cake or sometimes used along with flowers. You just might chance upon a vintage topper on a cake though – especially if the topper was saved from another family member’s wedding or if, like myself, the bride is sentimental or a collector of vintage wedding cake toppers. (*) Correction made to the edited/published article.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vintage Wedding Memories @ 2006 - All Rights Reserved |
|
