I love the English language, it is always on the lookout for words to steal and here are a couple of french terms the Victorians made their own: a cachepot is a container to put a potted plant in, literally ‘hide pot’ and tole is sheet metal and especially tinplate for use in domestic and ornamental wares in which it is usually japanned or painted and often elaborately decorated.
The Victorians loved having potted plants in their homes. The better off had all sorts of rather elegant containers in ceramic, wood and silver, in order to hide the plant pot – quite often these matched other prestige items in the home, for instance, wine coolers. For less well off households there was tole – a decorative, painted surface on a relatively cheap material, tinplate. I think they are rather lovely and I wouldn’t mind having one myself.
They could be relatively simple like this one with its Greek Revival border to
this charming one featuring a cartouche of painted roses.
or could bring a touch of the Grand Tour into your home like the Italian one above.
French ones were quite sought after,
like this 19th century lovely,
as was anything with a Japanese flavour.
You may not want to damage them with water leaking from plant pots but they look great filled with other decorative items –
or used simply as waste paper bins.
With so many possibilities it would be a shame not to make use of these once extremely popular period features.
