Vintage Wedding Cake Toppers

Since I started collecting vintage cake toppers, a couple of years ago, I have been looking for a reference book. Now, I have found a great one. This book is beyond fabulous, what a beautiful collection! The pictures are large and clear with a history that has been helpful in identifying my toppers. This book is a winner. Thank you for asking for my review.

They were the best to date my collection

it was as described and arrived promptly

Nice Book!

BEAUTIFUL BOOK. VERY WELL DONE WITH DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS AND PRICE GUIDE

I don't normally feel a necessity to write a review on a book but I feel compelled to do so at this time. I purchased Penny Henderson's book called "Vintage Wedding Cake Toppers" and knew after reading it that I wanted to contact Penny and talk to her about her wonderful collection. I was fortunate enough to meet Penny through emails and found her very passionate about her collection. I am an avid collector and feel that this book has covered every aspect of collecting and then some. This book was written about vintage wedding cake toppers for cake top collectors and those who are interested in learning more about them. Penny touches on the background and culture of wedding cakes in Chapter One: A Brief History of Wedding Cakes. In her bibliography she names Simon R. Charsley the author of "Wedding Cakes and Cultural History" as the foremost authority on the history of wedding cakes. I have read his book and agree that it is the best book available regarding the history of wedding cakes. If one wishes to study the history of wedding cakes further, this is definitely the book to read. As I stated above, I feel this is a collector book for vintage wedding cake top collectors and people that are interested in learning more about them. This book was not written on the subject of culinary arts or to learn about being a wedding advisor, although I believe that wedding experts and culinary artists would enjoy this book very much. There are many books available on Amazon and in the library about the subject of culinary art and weddings. There is such a wealth of information in this gorgeous paperback book. At almost an inch think and 183 pages, it is filled with 575 colored photographs and more than adequate tips on collecting. What more could a collector want! When you peruse this book you'll see Penny and Mary Swafford's wonderful collections. Collections one only dreams about. I have Penny's book sitting in my "wedding" room along side of my wedding cake toppers and call it my "wish book". Someday, I can only hope to have so many lovely wedding cake toppers. Penny has told me that her favorite toppers are the early ones that are rare and hard to find. However, she also loves her later "plastic" cake toppers and discusses them in her book with as much zeal. My collection started with the plastic toppers from the 1950's, 60's, and 70's, and I feel there was more than enough information given about them. This book shows beautiful examples dating from the 1890's through the 1970's. If one wants to investigate the newer cake toppers from the 1980's onward, I'm almost sure that most craft stores or places that specialize in wedding cakes have manufacturer's catalogues. I think I am safe to say that most serious collectors do not normally collect toppers later than the decade of the 1970's unless the topper is incredibly different. I personally feel anything after 1980 is not rare so they are not included in my collection. I found the section in Chapter Three about the bride and grooms wedding attire, more than exceptional. I have found it useful in my searches since the bride especially changed the style of costume over the decades. The hemline of the bride's gown went up and down. Her skirt went from full to form fitting to full again. Sleeve lengths changed with the styles. All these changes are reflected in the cake toppers of the era. Therefore, the drawings and their descriptions in Chapter Three are very useful in establishing a time period when you don't have any other reference or history. After talking with Penny I found out that she was very unhappy about not being able to use her antique and vintage wedding photograph collection due to the copyright and/or privacy laws. She was unable to contact the bride, groom, and photographer to obtain permission to use the photographs because most of her photographs were purchased in antique shops, flea markets, etc. She found out about this unfortunate predicament so close to her deadline that she did not have enough time to hire anyone to do the drawings therefore she had to do them herself. It was either that or leave out this important information. She chose to do the drawings, and I for one am glad she did, and feel they are very adequate. Penny mentions in her book, that it is very rare to get information/history about the bride and groom whose wedding cake the topper appeared on. I find this to be true also. One purchases their cake toppers wherever they can find them.....antique shows, shops, and malls, flea markets, on-line auctions, and occasionally at an estate sale. The latter being the most likely place to find a cake topper with the history of the topper. Otherwise, and unfortunately, they rarely come with the historical facts attached. I only have one cake topper that came with any history. I have a couple that are dated with a hand written date, but other than that, I have no historical information on the near 100 other cake toppers in my collection. I see in many of Penny's descriptions with her photograph example that she mentions any history that was available with the cake topper she purchased. She does point out that most chalkware and plastic toppers are dated, and have a manufacture name, but again, not all have the actual history of the cake topper. As one reads Penny's book, they will find that she states in Chapter Three, Determining Values that she did not establish her price guide from on-line auctions since "the difference in prices from one auction to the next varies greatly, depending on the types and activity of the bidders involved". I have found the same to be true. She collected her value ranges from antique markets and shows and therefore the prices are what we can expect to see in antique shops and malls country wide. I have only known of one exceptional cake topper in a museum that I am hoping to visit this summer. If there are other museums or exhibits that display vintage wedding cake toppers please contact Penny with the information and she will in turn forward the information to me. In my opinion this is one of the best books available now and probably ever will be written on the subject of "Vintage Wedding Cake Toppers". A joy for collectors and non-collectors alike.

I was thrilled to find a book dedicated to wedding cake toppers, which I have collected for years, thinking it a relatively obscure hobby. I ordered this right away, sight unseen, and boy was I disappointed! For almost $30, you get only a slim paperback (not a hardcover) that seems at most to be photographs of Ms. Henderson's personal collection, supplemented by perhaps a few of her collecting buddies. This is not a comprehensive study of the field, nor are there examples from a wide variety of sources, such as museums or culinary schools or experts in the field of weddings. Ms. Henderson does have a sumptuous collection, especially of rare toppers constructed of frosting and/or marzipan...astonishing in that they survived 100 years or more, let alone did so in nearly flawless condition. However, this only accounts for a few pages of the book. More than a dozen pages are dedicated to "wedding fashions over the ages", with drawings by a rank amateur artist (not a professional illustrator by the most generous consideration), almost as if a child did them. Furthermore, it's impossible to really gain an understanding of wedding fashions from such rough sketches...nor is it really clear that even a encyclopaedic knowledge of wedding clothing would help you to understand or identify these often tiny figurines, which are reproduced often for decades in clothing (long white dresses!) that doesn't really change as much as everyday clothing. The other thing I hoped for was some detailed idenfication of commonly found modern (last 50 years) wedding cake toppers, as one often sees the same ones over and over, with clearly identifiable style markers for the different manufacturers (Bakery Crafts, Mellillo, Pfiel and Holing, Venice and others), but Ms. Henderson is no help here. She clearly prefers her pricey Victorian pieces and has little interest in the modern, plastic items which are more commonly found and collected by the ordinary collector. Lastly, I would have liked to hear from people talking about THEIR own wedding cake toppers...if they were saved or not...how they were chosen...what meaning they have for the individual whose wedding they represent. I have found in collecting these toppers that there is a virtual treasure trove of information out there about this, if one could only tap into it. Wedding cake toppers are unique in that they are often the sole surviving decorative element from a deeply important life event...an event that might cost many thousands of dollars to stage, and of immeasurable importance to those individuals involved...and yet decades later, these fragile little "icons of romance" are all that is left! Simply the fact that they are treasured and preserved despite their fragility is a testament to the meaning that they symbolize! How many other decorations in life stand for romantic love and lifelong commitment? As the granddaughter of a pastry chef, who created many thousands of wedding cakes in his career, these decorative figurines have always fascinated me! I think this field of collecting truly deserves an in-depth cultural study...more than simply a price guide, but a real exploration of the beauty and cultural meaning of these delicate and fascinating items. "Vintage Wedding Cake Toppers" is FAR FAR from that exploration. At the most it affords the moderate level collector a glimpse at what splendid Victorian examples one could possibly collect, if you had an nearly unlimited budget. At the worst, it's just a series of rather poorly composed and lit samples, with quickly outdated price information gleaned from ebay. At $30, this is vastly overpriced and of extremely limited usefulness.

As wedding and special event photographers, we have seen many, many wedding cake toppers from fresh flowers to 50-year old cake toppers to elaborate hand-blown glass pieces. However we've never seen such a large collection of cake toppers from vintage to new and can also proudly state that we were also one of the group of photographers for this book. We can honestly say that we've never seen such painstaking care and detailing of any collectible collection. You can tell that the author truly enjoys her toppers and that she really wants to share that emotion with others. It was also very thoughtful of her to bring in other types of cake toppers, including the handmade ones. The time and effort that went into publishing this book is amazing. We own and have read other books about collectibles, and as far as we're concerned, this book is right up there with the best of them!