Chocolate molds and tins
The first chocolate molds were created in France in the 1830s and were made of copper frames to make lots of small flat chocolates at once, since chocolate had been “discovered” as a sort of medicinal health food in the 17th Century.
Jan Jantz von Huesden opened a chocolate shop in Dresden, Germany, which became the chocolate capital of the world in 1839 with help from Rudolph Lindt of Switzerland.
French chocolatiers made three dimensional molds in the 1840s from copper covered with silver. Made from two mirrored pieces, they were clamped together with “clips” that looked something like today’s paper clips. Mold producers switched to silver wash to replace tin in the 1860s, then to steel by 1910 with tin covering the steel to release the chocolate.
Thermoplastic formed chocolate molds in the 1960s and, by the 1980s, plastic (leaning against the backboard) basically replaced all metal chocolate molds.
I gathered most of the chocolate molds and chocolate tins in France and England. The Banania and Banika ones were quite controversial in the mid-1900s because the brown faces on containers containing brown powder were considered racist. Today, companies are updating packaging and even changing names on products to address race on food packaging.
And don’t miss the slightly suggestive Chocolate Chipper.