About this lot
Description
A George V silver two piece chocolatière set, by Garrard & Co, London 1919, in the 18th century style, of traditional lighthouse form, the domed and hinged gadrooned covers with additional hinged finials, the spouts with strapwork borders, one flared, the other, swan neck with hinged cover, the side placed wooden handles with pierced reeded and scrolled silver embellishment, strapwork caps and button thumbpieces, signed to the bases, 40.8ozt gross (2)
Other Notes: Our love affair with chocolate goes back thousands of years but the options to enjoy it weren't always so varied. When the Spanish first introduced it to Western Europe in the 17th century, there was only one option: hot chocolate, and it was prepared in its very own vessel, the chocolatière, or chocolate pot. Chocolate pots differed from coffee pots in several ways. Drinking chocolate was very thick and tended to settle, so it was essential to continue whipping it with a slender stick called a molinet. To accommodate the molinet, a chocolate pot had a hole in the top of the lid for the molinet handle to extend from, allowing the host to stir the chocolate without splashing the guests. The hole usually had a hinged cover to keep in the heat. Spouts on chocolate pots were usually wide and set high on the pot - both qualities related to the froth on the top of the chocolate. Since the froth floated, locating the spout high helped to capture the foam. Similarly, a wide spout facilitated getting it into a serving cup. A high spout also helped to keep the undesirable sediments that settled to the bottom out of the serving cups. The earliest chocolate pots had handles set at right angles to the pot. There is no clear reason why, but theories suggest it allowed the pourer to stir the chocolate as it was being poured - or it might be that this sort of handle made it easier to pour the upper half of the vessel, which is where the most desirable foam and drinking chocolate would reside. It would have been easier to keep the undesirable gritty bits at the bottom in the pot.
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