Phot. Z. Reszka

Each steward, cook and host hoped that his set table and served dishes would be admired and stunning not only owing to the actual meal but also due to appearance. This is the reason why skillfully garnised dishes and their arrangement comprised a difficult and important aspect of culinary art. The most famous cookbooks usually contained, apart from recipes, also the secrets of decorations, sometimes accompanied by plans of setting the table and illustrations of sophisticated compositions relying on various elegantly displayed ingredients. The presented mould is an example of aspic appliances still popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a rule, they were produced in the shape of semicircles or cylinders with decorative surfaces featuring the shapes of architectural, plant or animal motifs. Just like the majority of kitchen utensils, the moulds were made of copper zinc plated on the inside and were hung along the kitchen walls. The presented exhibit, purchased for the collection, is additionally valuable – it possesses the signature of the maker, very rarely encountered in appliances of this sort.