Antique Gilt Bronze Two-Light Candelabra with Porcelain Flowers

Antique Gilt Bronze Two-Light Candelabra with Porcelain Flowers

France | 19th Century

A two-light candelabra built as a flowering branch. Leafy stems rise out of a pierced rocaille base and divide, carrying two nozzles cast as tulip cups above broad leaf drip-pans. Threaded through the whole of it are porcelain flowers: a white narcissus with a yellow eye, a ruffled bloom in green and cream, a dark red rose gone almost black at the centre, a peach rose, a white rose fully open, and a scatter of buds among the gilt foliage.

Each flower is modelled and painted by hand, petal by petal, which is why no two are quite the same size and why the white ones turn faintly translucent when light gets behind them. The convention goes back to the eighteenth century, when Vincennes sold porcelain flowers by the thousand to be wired onto gilt bronze so that a room could have a branch in bloom in January. The nineteenth century kept making them because the effect never stopped working.

The gilding is warm, and worn in the places a hand naturally takes it. The base is pierced and scrolled in the rococo taste and stands solid.

It is an object that does not need to be lit to do its job, though it takes a candle perfectly well. 8” x 7”

Details

• Object: Two-light candelabra
• Material: Gilt bronze with hand-modelled and painted porcelain flowers
• Origin: France
• Date: 19th century
• Condition: Good antique condition, with wear to the gilding consistent with age, a few chips on porcelain flowers