Dreamy Creamware

I saw many wonderful, inspiring gardens in England as part of my course on the Arts and Crafts Garden, on side trips with other students in the program, and two on my own in London: the Chelsea Physics Garden and Regents Park.  My first day in London had glorious weather, sunny and warm, and the garden was enormously interesting.  I especially liked the fern house, but then I've been partial to ferns for a few years as deer do not eat them.  I visited with a cat, too.  On Sunday I went to see Regents Park where I'd never been despite all the time I've spent in London: Queen Mary's Rose Garden is awe-inspiring, and there is a beautiful flower border near the collection of David Austin roses that follows Gertrude Jekyll's precept of gradations in the intensity of color.  Then it poured rain, as it had on Saturday when I shopped for antiques on Portobello Road and Church Street.  Which brings me to the subject of this blog: a creamware jelly mold that I found.  It is lovely, softer in color and feel than the ironstone molds I know.  The motif is a branch of plums, indicating this was a cold dessert mold, used for sweetmeats and fruits set in aspic or blanc mange.  It is early, about 1820, but late enough to have a proper base to stand on.  The earlier molds did not stand on their own but would be stabilized in a sand box while the contents set.