This rare, hand-painted bisque, silk, and pearl decorated wedding cake topper, ca 1920s, represents a bride and groom in 18th century dress and wigs. One might think that, like so many holiday traditions involving decoration, the wedding cake topper was popularized in Victorian England or originated in Ancien Regime France when food, hair and faces were either beautifully decorated or considered unpresentable. Topping the cake, however, seems to have taken root humbly in America at the turn of the 20th century when most weddings were celebrated at home with wheat or fruit cakes finished off with artfully arranged pieces of glass, paper and wood. Perhaps not surprisingly, toppers were particularly fashionable in the decades following WWI and WWII. Emily Post offers advice to high society brides on the placement of wedding cake figurines in Etiquette published in 1922; and by 1927 affordably priced bride and groom ornaments filled a full page of the Sears catalogue. The late 1940s through the 1950s were perhaps the heyday of cake toppers, when marriage became a national pastime and weddings became more elaborate. During those years, the now familiar and much collected plaster cast bride and grooms in formal dress became ubiquitous. Our example, hand-worked in fine materials and period detail, must have been made for a demanding client to whom money was no object and elegance everything. Condition: Excellent, with staining to the base and overall wear consistent with age. Dimensions: 5.5." at base x 6" high.