July 7 is World Chocolate Day (by some accounts), so let’s celebrate … 1893 style!

Chocolate and cocoa could be found in many locations on the fairgrounds of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Blooker’s Dutch Cocoa Windmill and House was one lovely display where visitors could sample some hot cocoa, but a set of mammoth chocolate statues exhibited by Maillard’s chocolates in the Agricultural Building must have been one of the most amazing sights.

Maillard’s Chocolate advertising postcard. [Image from the Boston Public Library]

Maillard Chocolates

French confectioner Henri Maillard (1816-1900) opened a store in New York in 1848, establishing a reputation as a premiere chocolatier using the name of Henry Maillard. His chocolates were featured at President Lincoln’s inaugural ball and earned a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878.

For the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia, Maillard showcased an astonishing confection display that fit well into the theme of the Centennial Exposition:

“Towering in the center of the case was a 15-foot ‘monument of white sugar and chocolate’ depicting episodes in American history, including America’s first victory of the Revolution—the capture of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, and the Green Mountain Boys, an event that occurred exactly a century to the day before the Exposition opened.” [Westbrook, 200]

At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Maillard showed his sweets in a nearly 1,000-square-foot display space in the Agricultural Building. The company exhibited confectionery under the Exposition classification of Department A.-Agriculture in Group 3 (Sugars, Syrups, Confectionery, Etc.) and exhibited cocoa and chocolate in Group 8 (Tea, Coffee, Spices, Hops, and Aromatic and Vegetable Substances. [Handy, 510] The show-stopper in the Maillard gallery was a trio of enormous chocolate sculptures.

A postcard advertising Maillard’s Exhibit of “Fine Chocolates & Cocoa” and “Celebrated Confections” in the Agriculture Building of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. In the pavilion are the chocolate statues of Columbus (left), Venus (center), and a partially visible Minerva (right).

As if carved in marble or cast in bronze

Towering inside the pavilion was a statue of Christopher Columbus made of solid chocolate, standing seven-and-a-half feet tall and weighing 1,700 pounds. Maillard’s also displayed elegant copies in chocolate of the classical statues of the Venus de Milo and Minerva, each 1,500 pounds. “The face of Minerva is as severe and remorseless as if carved in marble or cast in bronze” wrote one report. [Pharmaceutical Era]

Although the art pieces were sometimes described as being “carved out of chocolate,” [Johnson, 20] the Columbus statue was prepared using molds. In their New York manufactory, artisans cast these work in sections, using melted chocolate poured into molds and then allowed to harden. The sections were transported to Chicago during the first week of May, where they were assembled into the delicious display. [Pharmaceutical Era]

The modeler for the Columbus statue was none other than Gaetano Russo, sculptor of the thirteen-foot marble statue of Columbus that stands atop a rostral column in Columbus Circle (8th Avenue and 59th Street) in New York. A gift to the City of New from the Italian-American community, the statue was dedicated on October 12, 1892, to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas.

The statue of Christopher Columbus by Gaetano Russo in Columbus Circle in New York. [Image available under the Creative Commons.]

Sweet in any form

Before bringing Venus to the Chicago Exposition, Maillard had brought a chocolate Venus to the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, exhibiting the extraordinary statue in the category of “Ordinary Applications of the Arts of Drawing and Modeling.” Sources report this 1889 Venus as being either lighter (400 pounds) [Goldstein, 418] or a heavier (3,000 pounds) [Shapiro, 76] [Westbrook, 202] than her younger sister in Chicago.

The ersatz Venus was not well received in Paris. “Only a Yankee could have conceived the idea of creating an edible Venus de Milo,” scoffed one French critic, likely not realizing he was disparaging a fellow Frenchman. [Goldstein, 418] Reporting to Congress on the 1889 Exposition, American Arthur J. Stace was left speechless by the artwork and noted that she suffered an indignity:

“As to Maillard’s chocolate Venus we do not know what to say. Venus is presumably sweet in any form, but in chocolate she may be thought too sweet for any use. At the time of writing, however, she shows the result of various nibblings, although the Exposition is not half over.” [Stace, 161]

Unauthorized tastings were not the only force of destruction on the chocolate display. The Venus statue reportedly “wilted a little in the heat” of the Paris Exposition [Shapiro, 76], prompting one French writer to assert that “No, chocolate is decidedly not the sculptural material of the future.” [Westbrook, 203]

An illustration of the “Effect of the Heated Term-Demise of the Chocolate Lady” by W. W. Denslow [Image from the Chicago Herald July 24, 1893. p. 9.]

Demise of the Chocolate Lady

Despite that prediction, even more chocolate sculptures were on display at the World’s Fair four years later. Summer temperatures in Chicago may have had a similar effect on Maillard’s Minerva statue. W. W. Denslow, future illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), prepared a drawing of the “Effect of the Heated Term–Demise of the Chocolate Lady” for an article in the Chicago Herald in July which mentioned the Minerva statue.

The chocolate figures reportedly were coated in some sort of eatable varnish, intended to help protect them “from the tropical heat of Chicago’s summer” but in a way that did not “render the chocolate unfit for use as food” after the exhibition. [Pharmaceutical Era] How a superficial varnish could prevent melting is a mystery, as is what happened to the three chocolate sculptures at the close of the Fair at the end of October. Let’s hope they were put to good use!

Nearby in the Agricultural Building stood an eleven-feet-high and 3,000-pound solid chocolate statue of Germania inside of a chocolate pavilion of the Stollwerck Brothers of Cologne, Germany … but this may be more chocolate than we can consume in one day, so let’s visit Germania again in another post.

The Maillard Pavilion of chocolate. [Image from White, Trumbull; Igleheart, William World’s Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1893. J. W. Ziegler, 1893.]

SOURCES

Goldstein, Darra The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Handy, Moses P. The Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition. W. B. Conkey, 1893.

“In Great Galleries” Chicago Herald July 24, 1893. p. 9.

Johnson, Rossiter A History of the World’s Columbian Exposition Volume 3 – Exhibits. D. Appleton and Co., 1897.

“The Palatial Maillard’s” Theater Magazine, Oct. 1908, xxiii.

Pharmaceutical Era, May 1, 1893, p. 427.

Shapiro, Howard-Yana Great Moments in Chocolate History: With 20 Classic Recipes from Around the World. National Geographic Books, 2015.

Stace, Arthur J. “Education and Liberal Arts” The Executive Documents of the House of Representatives for the First Session of the Fifty-First Congress 1889-90. Volume 39. Government Printing Office, 1893, 115-192.

A Week at the Fair, Illustrating the Exhibits and Wonders of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Rand, McNally & Co., 1893.

Westbrook, Nicholas “Chocolates at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1964” in Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage. Louis Evan Grivetti and Howard-Yana Shapiro (eds.). Wiley, 2009.