A fifty-three-light cut-glass chandelier, late 19th / 20th century, in the manner of Osler

This chandelier is on a particularly magnificent scale, and is an example of the opulent High Victorian style favoured by top-end firms like Osler. Osler, who were based in Birmingham, were the foremost manufacturers of glass lighting in Britain, and were the creators of the enormous crystal fountain that took centre stage at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (see the watercolour by James Roberts in the Royal Collection, RCIN 919985). The elaborate cut-glass pendants and nozzles on the present example are typical of their work, with imaginative variations from an Osler catalogue reproduced in J. Smith, Osler's Crystal for Royalty and Rajahs, London, 1991, p.41. The almost fern-like curves at the top of the chandelier were also common for Osler chandeliers, as visbile on the examples in op. cit., pp.32, 42 and 54-55. As with much Victorian decoration, this scroll motif possibly takes inspiration from Georgian precedents, since similar motifs can be seen on eighteenth-century examples in M. Mortimer, The English Glass Chandelier, Woodbridge, 2000, pl.30-31.