Vintage Breadboards

Madeleine Neave’s book is unique, describing her collection of breadboards from Victorian times, from her Antique Breadboard Museum. A book for wood carvers, antique collectors, people who visit car boot sales and antique fairs, and for people who want their own kitchen to be quirky and love original kitchenalia. Also a great book for bakers and people who wish to do intricate wood carving. Madeleine Neave has arranged the collection of breadboards, knives, butter churns and other kitchen paraphernalia which was started by her mother, Rosslyn, who was an antique restorer and collector. She runs the Antique Breadboard Museum from her home serving cream teas, and visitors are asked to choose which breadboard to have their scones and jam served on. Decorative ‘bread-platters’ were hugely popular in Victorian times, firstly among the elite who commissioned custom-made items featuring their coats-of-arms and mottos. They were also used to commemorate royal ceremonies, and of course, families put their crests on them if they were upper class. By the 1860s, enterprising workshops were producing bread-platters more cheaply with standardised carving for the mass market. The production centre until the 1950s was Sheffield, with skilled turners, carvers and metalworkers collaborating to produce matching sets of tableware. In the book, Madeleine Neave shows us how beautiful and varied the boards were, with the inclusion of butter knives, butter churners, and memories from her mother, Rosslyn, who began the collection after a childhood on a farm, milking cows by hand, and making butter.