Chocolate Box
Ilze's Chocolat chocolate box has consistently received attention for a unique chocolate selection line as well as packaging.
Chocolate Boxes are a delicious, beautiful way to package a chocolate gift box for that special day. Our chocolate boxes are lovely when filled with chocolate edibles, and they look equally elegant with any type of chocolate, milk, white, Belgium or dark with a variety of flavours they are all tempting .
History of the chocolate box and it's art
Chocolate box art originally referred literally to chocolate decorations on chocolate boxes. Over the years the terminology has developed and is now applied broadly as a descriptive, but often pejorative, term to describe paintings and designs that are warm, idealistic and sentimental.
Renoir's paintings have been described as 'chocolate box' and have been derided by the likes of Degas and Picasso for being happy, inoffensive scenes. Constable's landscapes have also been so described.
Aelbert Cuyp's River Landscape 1660, despite being widely regarded as his best work, has been criticised as having "chocolate box blandness". Fred Swan is a modern day proponent of chocolate box paintings as, to his detractors, is Thomas Kinkade.
Richard Cadbury, using his own paintings of children, flowers and holiday scenes, the son of the founder of Cadburys, introduced such designs to his chocolate boxes in the late 19th century.
About Cadbury chocolate box art
Cadbury's 'fancy chocolates' (or assortments) were sold in decorated boxes with small pictures that children could cut out to stick into scrapbooks.
Richard Cadbury, who had considerable artistic talents, set out to introduce more ambitious and attractive designs from his own paintings: many of his original boxes still exist. Using his own children as models, or depicting flowers and scenes from holiday journeys, he introduced the first British made fancy chocolate boxes. These proved to be popular, helping both the Cadbury business and the confectionery trade in general.
Elaborate chocolate boxes were prized by the late Victorians as special gifts, to be used as trinket or button boxes once the fancy chocolates had been eaten: designs therefore had after-use very much in mind. Designs ranged from superb velvet covered caskets with bevelled mirrors and silk lined jewel boxes, to pretty boxes with pictures of kittens, landscapes or attractive girls on the lid.
Their popularity continued until their disappearance during the 1939-45 war: Victorian and Edwardian chocolate boxes are now treasured collectors' items.
In the 1870s the quality of the chocolates produced by the company following the introduction of the cocoa press helped Cadbury break the monopoly French producers previously enjoyed in the British market.
You can checkout Ilze's Chocolat Gallery here, her chocolate are sold individually or in small, medium and large assorted gift box or on its own.