Pair of George III silver candelabra, Matthew Boulton, Birmingham, 1783

of baluster form, shaped square bases, dye stamped with gadroons, acanthus leaves and husks, the detachable two-light branches, reeded scroll arms terminating in beeded and gadrooned drip pans below palm leaf-wrapped sconces, central urn-shaped finial, loaded

Associated Literature:

The same model, lacking branches, is illustrated in:

Robert Rowe, Adam Silver 1765-1795, Faber & Faber, London, 1965, fig 51B.

Eric Delied & Michael Roberts, The Great Silver Manufactory, Matthew Boulton & the Birmingham Silversmiths 1760-1790, Studio Vista, London, 1971, between pp. 88-89, second from right.

Matthew Boulton was one of a group of like-minded individuals living and working in Birmingham in the second half of the eighteenth century who formed a group called the Lunar Society. The group's founding members were Boulton, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather to Charles Darwin) and Dr. William Small who was a friend and tutor of Thomas Jefferson. The society met regularily to discuss the intellectual developments and fashions of the day and as Robert Rowe notes in his book Adam Silver, 'Probably the thing they all had in common was the belief that they represented the vanguard of discovery heralding a new sort of improvement in the lot of mankind.'¹ Boulton was not formally educated but the output of his factory, including these candelabra, illustrates his interest in classicism and the skill his artists and workmen developed of combining various classical elements into one visually harmonious object.

1. Rowe, p. 57.