Rare Antique Victorian Solid Pewter Banquet 3-Piece Ice Cream or Ice Mould, 1868.

These moulds were very popular in large households, to impress guests during feasts or banquets, used mainly for ice cream. Agnes Bertha Marshall, the celebrity cook of her day, wrote ‘The Book of Ices’ in 1885, and called them “some of the prettiest dishes it is possible to send to the table”. The most fashionable way to serve it at well-to-do dinner parties was moulded into the shape of vegetables or fruit. Ice cream was made with a base made of water, cream or custard, then flavoured with sugar and fruit pulp. Concentrated essence and food colourings were also added. It was frozen using an ice cream machine, a cylindrical tin container surrounded with a mixture of ice and salt inside a wooden outer container. The mixture had to be continually stirred using the machine’s handle so it started to freeze evenly before being moulded. Ice cream had been around since the 17^th century, but increased in popularity in Victorian times when imported ice and ice chests and boxes were developed to store both the ice and the finished ice creams.

These three part Victorian ice cream moulds have become increasingly rare. This is a superb example of an ice mould , with an accurate registration design date of '22nd July 1868' and a clear pewter touchmark for Benham & Froud. This company was in production between 1855 and 1924 at Chandos Street, London, although the roots of the company extend backwards in time to 1785 with John Kepp. Their famous 'orb and cross' mark was adopted because the firm made the present cross on the dome of St Paul's Cathedral in 1821 and it could be seen from the shop in London.

This ice cream mould is made in three parts, the base, the body and the lid with the three pieces simply pushing together. The mould would have been used to produce a column of ice cream to present at the table. The top is domed and modelled as a pumpkin or possibly a peeled orange. The body has smooth walls to the exterior with prominent vertical fluting to the interior, the bottom of the flutes or ribs have a beaded frame the tops form a smooth frame to the moulded pumpkin. The base is smooth to the sides as they fit over the edge of the main body. The base an lid have a milled edge to help ease them off and to obtain the contents.

The interior base hase has all the maker marks, it has the orb and cross for Benham & Froud, it is also marked ‘NO  78’ and ‘1 PINT’. The registrated design kite lozenge gives the day as ‘22’, month as ‘I’ for July and the year as an ‘X’ for 1868, together this gives a date of 22^nd July 1868. Manufacture would have continued for a number of years before and after that date.

The mould is in good used antique condition, it is complete and intact, with no breakages or cracks, there is a ding to the lower rim of the body as shown in the above photographs. It measures approx. 11.6cm by 9cm in diameter at the widest point and weighs 680g.

A very rare collectable ice cream mould.

Please see pictures for more details.

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