(Editor’s note: DeeDee Wood is the owner of Black Cat Curiosities, an online antiques research and sales venue.)
n modern times, we get our butter stick out of the refrigerator, take it out of the plastic or paper container, and either cut it from the rectangular shape a machine has pressed it into, or scoop it out of a container made of plastic.
There was once a time, however, that butter was treated with the upmost care, and embellished with wooden molds for presentation.
These are called wooden butter molds in today’s antiques world, and are highly collectible.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, farmers churned butter by hand, and before it cooled down, it was sometimes pressed into wooden molds that had an embellishment carved into them, that would “stamp” the butter with a particular design, and it would stay on the butter’s surface when it cooled. The stamp made for an interesting and beautiful presentation.
There were a few versions of these molds. A long handle would push the design into the buttery surface, and then be retracted, although there were some versions that had no handle, and a more stamped method could be deployed. 
There were also molds the butter was placed into, a wooden cavity that was filled with butter, with the imprint on the bottom.
Much like a cake pan, you would dump the butter out of the mold onto a plate when it had cooled. There were many ingenious designs made out of wood for butter molds, varying in shapes, sizes, and ways of imprinting. Some were more like a hand-cranked machine, some a simple stamp. Ingenuity, requirements and design all engineered the wooden butter mold and its many designs.
In an age where farm goods and products were used as trade, stamping a pattern into the mold would serve two purposes-the farmer could sell a decorative item, and it was almost a trademark, or indicator who had made it, and was useful in early “branding” of their hand-churned product when they took it to bigger venues, such as trading markets or local places their items would sell (outside of their farming communities, in stores.)
Common designs on these molds, often made out of hard woods for longevity, included popular themes that surround primitive antiques, such as pineapples, wheat, farm themes like chickens, cows and barns, or more ornate, decorative ornamentation, such as floral themes and symmetrical design schemes. The “stamp” was hand-carved, and many of these 1800s molds are considered “primitive antiques,” meaning they were made on a lathe or hand carved and handmade, without the use of machinery.
The mold worked by churning the butter, placing it in a pile, taking your mold, (which had been soaked in water the night before so the wood wouldn’t stick to the butter,) and pushing the wooden plunger down onto the butter, making an imprint of the contained stamp within the mold.
The mold was then pulled off, and your butter was formed into all sorts of shapes and patterns, available for sell or use.
As well, the butter could also be placed into the previously mentioned well style mold, and dumped out when cooled onto a plate later, or simply stamped on top of the butter with a stamp with no handle, among other creations and variations of these ingenious, handmade molds. In the DIY version, it was done at home and presented a remarkable addition to the table serving presentation.
When buying butter molds in the antiques marketplace, or even on an online venue, there are a few things to look for in quality.
Often times, since some molds can be more than 200 years old or more, the wood developed cracks, usually around stress or heavily used points. Like any other wooden product, if wood is not properly cared for over time, it can develop cracks and splits from dry air and time itself, as the organic material degrades. As well, if the mold was used quite often, it can be dulled a bit from use, not being as deep as it was when it was once carved.
Handles can fall off or be loose, and the mold might be too fragile to actually mold butter, and would be more of a collector’s item for consideration or appreciation, rather than use.
There can also be chips, dings, bug or wormwood holes, and smells and stains from use.
In the late 1800s, larger, national stores began to mass produce their own versions of these handmade molds, with machines that did the wood turning and hand carving of the stamp.
They sold for a relatively low price, provided a cheap way to embellish your all-important dining table, and made butter designs available to many people, not just the woodworkers or farmers who made these molds originally.
These usually had a patent number or date on them somewhere, and it is important to look for these markings to distinguish them from the real, primitive ones that are much older and have more historic value.
As with many old primitive items off of farms, ingenuity and practicality have changed over time, and are replaced with decoration, admiration and collecting an object that is unique.
Butter and margarine, (the cheaper, healthier counterpart to butter,) are usually formed with machines in factories for mass selling and product longevity, but butter molds remind us of a time when farm products were straight from the farmer, homegrown, handmade and embellished with care and creativity.
