Butter Prints
Made in Pennsylvania, United States, North and Central America
1800-1840
Artist/maker unknown, American, Pennsylvania German
Maple
1 x 5 1/8 inches (2.5 x 13 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1955-94-24
Titus C. Geesey Collection, 1955
Specially shaped and printed bread and pastries were
first put into use for ceremonies and celebrations nearly 5,000 years ago.
Early Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans shaped bread into forms of plants, animals,
and the sun, as well as stamped images on dough with wooden and ceramic molds. [i]
From pre-Christian times shaped bread and cakes were
used as token sacrificial offerings, communication tools (similar to coins)
relaying political propaganda, military successes, and images of the emperor,
and as religious and good-luck tokens. [ii]
From the 11th century the monasteries of
Franconia (a region in southern Germany) were making honey cakes and
pfefferkuchen (a form of gingerbread), as well as beekeeping and carving wooden
bread and cake molds. The first gingerbread Baker’s Guild began in 1643 in the
city of Nuremberg with 14 master gingerbread bakers who were bound by strict
regulations, including undergoing training for carving molds and passing an
examination demonstrating their skill. Until 1867, Nuremberg gingerbread
(called Lebkuchen) was exclusively made by hand. [iii]
Religious themes dominated cake molds as gingerbread
and honey-cake manufacture spread throughout western Europe. By the Renaissance,
however, the scope of designs broadened to include portraits of kings and
queens, animals, and letters of the alphabet, often with gilding to be sold at
fairs. Queen Elizabeth of England (ruled 1558-1603) bestowed “portrait”
gingerbread cakes upon important court visitors, and alongside these there are
many surviving molds of nobility made to honor military heroes, visiting
dignitaries, and royal weddings. [iv]
Printed and shaped cakes were gifted as symbols of good fortune, love, and
loss, as well as for attainment purposes (ex: eating a small lion-shaped cake
will increase one’s strength). [v]
Schwabian and English immigrants to the new world
brought with them many pastry molds used to carry on the traditions of their
homeland. Just as in Europe, in America there was a printed cake for nearly
every occasion, with printed cakes depicting symbolic designs given out on
Christmas and New Years day, and at births, weddings, and Funerals. [vi]
Often these wooden prints served many purposes: the stamp depicting an American
eagle used to imprint election cakes (also called training cakes), given out on
the election day of militia officers, was also used to imprint butter. [vii]
Pennsylvania farmers were the largest producers of
print butter in the country, and butter prints and molds were common-place
items in most households where butter making was a regular task. [viii]
Printed butter earned more money at the market and also served to identify the
farm from which it came; prints were carved intaglio (incised) resulting in a
raised, positive imprint, and bore dozens of designs including the heart, sheaf
of wheat, tulip, pineapple, and the American eagle.[ix]
Butter prints made by Pennsylvania Germans share the same motifs found on their
decorated furniture and illuminated manuscripts.
Further Reading:
The Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, PA, Pennsylvania Butter Tools and Processes,
Tools of the National Maker Series, Vol. II, 1974, p. 25.
William Woys Weaver, The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide Sweets,
(HarperPerennial, 1990), p. 119.
Frances Lichten, Folk
Art of Rural Pennsylvania, (London & New York, 1946)
John Joseph Stoudt,
Early Pennsylvania Arts and Crafts, (New York & London, 1964)
Sharon Hudgins, “Edible Art: Springerle Cookies”, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and
Culture, Vol. 4, no. 4 (University of California Press, Fall 2004), pp.
66-71.
George C. Boon (1958). “A Roman pastrycook's mould from
Silchester”, The Antiquaries Journal,
38, pp 237-240.
[i] Dr. Anneliese Harding, The Edible Mass Medium, (Harvard University, 1975), p. 4.
[ii] Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy, (The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1999), p. 66.
[iii] Steven Stellingwerf, The Gingerbread Book, (New York, 1991), p. 10.
[iv] Ibid. p. 9.
[v] C. Anne Wilson, Food
& Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century,
(Academy Chicago Publishers, 1991)
[vi] E. Sidney Harland, “Avril-Bread”, Folklore, Vol. 28, no. 3 (Sep. 30, 1917), pp. 305-310.
[vii] William Woys Weaver, America Eats: Forms of Edible Folk Art, (New York, 1989), p. 104.
[viii] Richard Flanders Smith, Pennsylvania Butter Prints, (Science Press: Ephrata, PA, 1970), p.
12.
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