During this period, sugar sculptures continued to be made and the artistic skills of the eighteenth century French confectioner were legendary. However, since their clientele was exclusively aristocratic, the French Revolution of 1789-93 caused many to leave France and seek employment elsewhere. A few came to London, others went further afield, some crossing the Atlantic and taking with them the art of sugar sculpture to the New World. One exiled Parisian sugar ornament maker, Stanislas Lannuier, sold his wares from a confectionery shop in Broadway, New York. In 1805, he advertised ‘for sale, independent of his sugar-work, a beautiful assortment of ornaments, including the Equestrian Statue of Great King Frederick’.

At this time, rapidly altering political and social trends were also bringing about stylistic changes in sugar art. The Napoleonic Wars created a militaristic culture, which found its chief gastronomic expression in victory banquets. Confectioners were in great demand, not to create the hedonistic trifles of the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, but to ornament the tables of conquering heroes with magnificent trophies of war. An austere neo-classicism became the visual language of the genre. In 1820, the confectioner Jarrin recollected a piece he had created for a victory reception for Napoleon,

At a dinner given by the city of Paris to Napoleon, then Emperor of the French, on his triumphant return from Germany, the Author constructed a group, two feet in height; the Emperor, whose figure bore a striking resemblance, was represented standing, and putting up his sword into the sheath, led by Victory, attended by several allegorical figures, which were intended to express the various high qualities so liberally attributed to Napoleon by the French, as long as success attended him. It was made for the centre of a table; and the Emperor, who rarely noticed anything which ornamented the table, observed his portrait, and, with his characteristic attention to works of ingenuity, was pleased to encourage the artist by his approbation.

In another passage, Jarrin outlined the the skills required by the ornament maker,

The making of articles in gum-paste is one of the most interesting branches of the confectioner’s art. This mode of decoration and embellishment was once in great vogue, and the most magnificent and costly ornaments have been made of gum paste; but it has fallen comparatively into disuse: and, what is worse for the confectioner, the fragments of the art have been transferred to pastry-cooks, and cooks, who have at once disfigured, if not destroyed, the most beautiful flower in the banquet of the confectioner. To make gum-paste properly, great care and dexterity, much patience, some knowledge of mythology, of history, and of the arts of modelling and design, are requisite- qualifications seldom possessed by the mere pastry-cook.

Jarrin obviously recognised that his art was in decline. The aristocratic patronage enjoyed before the Revolution had vanished and, as a result, the French officier (confectioner) was beginning to lose his high social status. His role was being combined with that of the patissier, whose position in the kitchen hierarchy had formerly been much lower, closer to that of a mere baker.

One of the pastry cooks that Jarrin almost certainly had in mind in his jealous attack was the celebrated Parisian patissier Marie-Antoine Carême (1724-1835). This moody and highly creative individual was certainly the most influential culinary professional of the nineteenth century, and his profusely illustrated books codified high-class cookery for the best part of a century. His designs for pièces montées and ornamental pastry in the form of classical ruins, Swiss chalets and obelisks, were slavishly copied by his disciples and were still being executed by catering students and competition chefs well into the second half of the twentieth century.

We have some firm, tangible evidence for this period in the form of a collection at the Bowes Museum acquired with the help of the Art Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2002. This remarkable assemblage of equipment is probably unique. It consists of forty-seven hardwood boards, many of them carved on both sides on blocks of boxwood, with a total of 730 individual intaglio impressions. Stylistically, most of the moulds appear to date from between 1825 and 1830 and would have been used to create sugar table ornaments of a Percier and Fontaine (Empire) style. A few are certainly earlier, with motifs associated with the period just before the French Revolution of 1789.

Four of the moulds are signed with the name Duteille, with an address in the Rue de la Consonerrie, Paris, while six others bear the name of Prati. This name also appears on a metal stamp, which has been used to brand the owner’s name on the moulds. There is also a boxwood form for constructing baskets, which is stamped with Prati’s name. Some of the moulds are partially carved. One has some designs drawn on its blank side, but the carving has not been started. At this period, confectioners frequently carved their own moulds, so it is possible that Prati created some of these moulds for his own use. Complementing this are twenty-seven sheets of pencil drawings and watercolour designs of ornaments. They were used as the basis of a reconstruction of a complete table centrepiece with accompanying decoration in an exhibition in 2002.