A George III Brass Twelve-Light Chandelier, Circa 1770

Apter-Fredericks, London;

Aso O. Tavitian Collection, New York

Brass chandeliers developed from Gothic prototypes and began to be produced in large quantities in Britain and the Netherlands in the 1600s and continued to be manufactured throughout much of the eighteenth century. In England they were less favoured for domestic interiors and tended to be placed in churches and public spaces, including the House of Commons, where they are visible in contemporary engravings. They also supplanted wall sconces as the primary lighting source in the Royal Palaces during the Georgian period.

The typical form was a central globe below a baluster stem from which the candle arms issued, but by the middle of the century this had evolved into a single baluster vase with acorn or vasiform finials above and below, often with gadrooning as on the present example. The Tavitian chandelier is of particularly large scale and is unusual in that the majority of brass chandeliers of ten or more lights have the arms arranged in multiple tiers, such as a twenty-light model with two tiers of branches of c.1760-80 in the Winterthur Museum, Delaware (illustrated in Donald Fennimore, Metalwork in Early America, 1996, no. 148 p.238) or the forty-light version with three tiers of branches dated 1768 formerly at Hamilton Palace, Scotland (illustrated in Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Woodbridge 1954, Vol. I p.327 fig. 3). A very similar ten-light chandelier with one tier of arms is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (M.290:10-1910), on loan to the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk. Of nearly identical model to the Tavitian example, it probably dates from c.1740 and has arms that hook into the main body rather than directly affixed as was often the case later in the century.

Another comparable twelve-light chandelier dated 1764 is also illustrated in Edwards, p.328, fig. 4; this employs a similar vase-shaped baluster stem with gadrooning above and below but interestingly has arms, nozzles and grease pans in a rococo style akin to mid-eighteenth century silver candlelabra rather than the more traditional plain scrolling arms seen on the previous examples. As Edwards observed, 'Brass chandeliers retained their baroque appearance until towards the end of the century when production declined, and were scarcely affected, save in details of ornament, by the rococo and neoclassical styles.' A further related pair of twelve-light brass chandeliers with arms arranged in two tiers and dated to c.1765-85 is in the Metropolitan Musuem, New York (24.68.1, 2); these have a similar stem and arms but nozzles and grease pans chased with acanthus decoration typical of silver candlesticks of the Adam period. This pair is currently exhibited in the American Wing in a period room decorated with panelling from the late 18th-century ballroom of Gadsby's Tavern, a historic hotel in Alexandria, Virginia where George Washington celebrated his birthday on several occasions. Finally, a related twelve-light single-tier example of simpler form is illustrated in Rupert Gentle and Rachael Feild, Domestic Metalwork 1640-1820, Woodbridge 1994, fig. 11 p.181.