Matthew K. Roy
DANVERS | There is a dash of foreshadowing in Cile Burbidge's maiden name.
Bellefleur. It means "beautiful flower."
The translation evokes an image Burbidge, 81, spent decades perfecting. She adorned wedding cakes with daisies, lilies, roses and other "stylized" examples.
"I like creating something," Burbidge said. "It was always wonderful to try something new."
Burbidge's elaborate creations, baked in the basement kitchen of her Stafford Road home, were once prominently displayed in the front windows of high-end wedding shops on Newbury Street in Boston and Fifth Avenue in New York. Her cakes turned the eye of The New York Times and Vogue magazine.
One of her masterpieces has been preserved in a glass case at the culinary school of Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, she said.
Now, she hopes that photographs of her work will become part of the National Archives at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which already has famous wedding dress sketches done by her husband, John Burbidge.
"He's already been in the Smithsonian," Burbidge said. "So it was my turn."
Earlier this summer, she submitted photographs of her work to the museum's archives.
John Burbidge's sketches for wedding gowns manufactured by Priscilla of Boston between 1968 and 1985 became part of the Smithsonian collection in 1998.
John Burbidge, 84, returned home from serving in World War II and became the top dress designer for Priscilla of Boston. He outfitted President Lyndon Johnson's daughter on her wedding day. The wedding dress he designed for Tricia Nixon | for her White House wedding to Edward Cox | was modeled by the first daughter on the cover of Life magazine.
But his knack for dress design was almost matched by his ability to safely transport and deliver his wife's cakes.
"When you're delivering (a cake)," Burbidge said, "there isn't a word spoken."
Multiple sections of a cake have to be carried into a reception hall. "It's a little tense," John Burbidge said.
Brides from far and wide have sought one of Cile's specialties. With cakes on display at Priscilla of Boston and Tiffany's in New York, her popularity spread by word of mouth.
Burbidge baked for a wedding in Baltimore, another in Naples, Fla., and even for the marriage of a tribal chief in Nigeria. She made one cake, costing about $6,000, for a wedding that cost $3 million on Long Island.
"You meet so many interesting people," John Burbidge said of the couple's adventures in matrimony. "We could tell a million stories."
The two met while students at the New England School of Art and Design in Boston. Married for 56 years, they have five children and seven grandchildren.
Burbidge's life as a cake maker started with a five-week course in cake decorating at the Lynn YMCA. She won her first award for a cake in 1965. She received $10 for it.
Her enthusiasm for her craft kept her busy, and she wrote two books about cake decorating. She taught adult education classes for 20 years at Danvers and Gloucester high schools. At her peak, she was teaching four nights a week.
Cile has lectured on cruise ships and mingled at luncheons with Ivana Trump and Jackie Onassis in attendance.
After a nearly 40-year career in the dress business, John Burbidge focused on his hobby | making Victorian-era gowns for dolls. Examples of his meticulous work have been put on display in museums throughout the country. A collection of his scale models are now at the Mansion and Gilded Age Museum in Lenox.
The couple celebrates each other's talent, but Burbidge is quick to point out a perk of her work.
"I can eat my mistakes," she said.
Burbidge has slowed down, but she still makes a cake on occasion. She recently baked one for a wedding exhibit scheduled for next spring at the Peabody Essex Museum.
"It's been a wonderful career. I've enjoyed it very much," she said. "It's been a marvelous life, really."
