Model truck is icing on cake at Museum of London's love exhibition

A six-inch high wedding cake topper, fashioned like a petrol gully emptier, is going on show at the Museum of London this Valentine’s Day weekend
The company’s pride and joy: the cake topper is a model of the Albion petrol gully emptier
Robert Dex @RobDexES12 February 2016

Nothing says I love you like a model refuse truck made out of icing sugar.

A six-inch high wedding cake topper, fashioned like a petrol gully emptier, is going on show at the Museum of London this Valentine’s Day weekend.

It was made almost 80 years ago for the wedding of Eileen and Reg Flavell, who met while working at Mechanical Cleansing Service in Dulwich.

Their son Den, who gave it to the museum, said the model was a copy of the company’s pride and joy — an Albion petrol gully emptier used to clean drains. Mr Flavell, 70, of Leatherhead, said: “My grandfather set up the firm and mum worked there as a secretary and dad was an accountant.

Wheel deal: Reg and Eileen Flavell get married in Dulwich in 1937. Their son has given the cake topper, modelled on an old waste disposal truck, to the Museum of London

“After the wedding it sat in a glass case on dad’s filing cabinet in his office until he retired and was then brought home where it took pride of place in their dining room. I think they would have been amazed and really proud that people were able to see it at the museum.”

The model forms part of a display, on show from today, telling the stories of four London couples through mementoes from their relationships, including a pop-up Valentine’s card from 1860.

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The elaborate card, which includes layers of lace paper covered in poems and flowers and a gold ring in a paper drawer, was made by Jonathan King for his wife Emily the year before they wed. They went on to set up a “Fancy Valentine Shop” in Victorian-era Islington.

The exhibition also includes a recording of Marinetta Giacon talking about how she met her Italian husband in 1944 while he was a POW at a camp in Barnet — and how they were reunited and married in London three years later.

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