THE CANDLESTICK

Ecclesiastical candlesticks have been in use from earliest times. The pricket form, that is with the spike for sticking the candle on, may be seen in use to-day. This form has survived in spite of its obvious inconvenience. It might have been of use for candles of great size, but even then long candles were apt to turn over if not kept upright by the attendant priests. The pricket or spike form may be at once dismissed, although older, as being outside the field of the domestic candlestick.

Whatever may have been the receptacle for candles in common domestic use in Elizabethan days, it is now lost. The candlestick has not been so fortunate as the spoon to escape the melting-pot. Even early Stuart examples are rare. Specimens of candlesticks of the first half of the seventeenth century are so rare as to be beyond the average collector’s pocket.

We are enabled to produce an early example of the time of Charles I, bearing the London hall-marks for the year 1637. This is the very year that Hampden refused to pay ship-money as taxes. Under cold and unimpassioned examination, it would appear that these patriots stood really on technicalities. The country gentleman, the man of Buckinghamshire environed by cornlands, refused to pay ship-money; that is, money to be devoted to safeguarding our coasts. The men of Devon, the men of the Kentish coasts and the Essex estuaries, the Lincolnshire ports, the Yorkshire seaboard, the city of Bristol, and estuary of the Thames guarding London, these were the fit and proper persons to pay for safeguarding the shores; the country gentleman whose thoughts could not soar above the soil, straightway became a patriot because he would not co-operate with the rest of his country in paying taxes for common defence. The Dutch could sweep the Channel and Van Tromp could carry a broom in derision at his masthead, but many of the country gentlemen of the Puritan days talked of turnips, and to resist payment of ship-money was deemed patriotic.

It will be seen that the example illustrated is simple in form. It is not so delicate as the brass candlestick of a slightly later day (illustrated p. 129). The bottom is like an inverted wine cup, and the straight pillar holds the candle. The marks on this are on the rim of the bottom, upside down, which has led some persons to suppose that the base might be used as a wine cup, which is absurd.

This type is the plainest possible, and suggests that little of any value preceded it. It leaves one with queer imaginings as to what the Tudor form may have been like. But one must not be too exacting. A glance at table manners gives modern precisians a shock. There was a common dish, at which all helped themselves. The habit of putting the hands into this dish to seize bits of meat does not seem to have been regarded as objectionable. This was in the fifteenth century. There were no soup plates till about the year 1600. Nor was there any large spoon for serving from the tureen till about a hundred years later, that is about 1700.

The Lambeth delft candlestick, with coat of arms, dated 1648, is more symmetrical than the example of the silversmith. It has the platform for the grease, similar to later examples in the next reign made of gun-metal, and very heavy.

Charles II Examples

There was an extraordinary demand for silver plate in the reign of Charles II. This is indicated in the diaries of Pepys and of Evelyn. We illustrate a pair of especial beauty and delicacy (p. 227).

These candlesticks were sold at Christie’s in 1908 for £1,420. They are 11 inches in height, and they bear the London hall-mark for 1673. The barrel is short, and fluted to represent a cluster of eight small columns. The barrel is connected with a cast and vase-shaped stem, ornamented with four lobes and four acanthus leaves. The platform has voluting shells, and the base is composed of four escalop shells. There is a delicacy about these candlesticks which is Italianate in character. From the barrel to the base the lines are graceful and subtle. There is nothing like them in English silver. They suggest the fanciful design of the best Japanese art, centuries before that art had penetrated Europe. Remarkable in many respects, it is representative of the joyousness and vivacity of the Restoration; they have no forbears and no successors. They are unique.

The fluted column was a form which appealed to the Carolean maker. In square bases with platforms inverted, this type departs from the fanciful curves of the pair illustrated. The straight line is predominant in the base, the platform, and the socket. Sometimes the baluster ornament of the seventeenth century is introduced in the stem.

Other late Stuart forms include the type with octagonal base, sometimes plain hammered, and deep, from which the stem springs as from a pan, and other forms with fluted column still on octagonal base, which in the later days of the seventeenth century began to be more subdued in character. By the middle of the seventeenth century the platform disappears in silver candlesticks.

An interesting specimen is the Charles II snuffers and tray, of the date of 1682. The snuffers are plain and flat and have the character of the handles of the porringer, of the date 1669 (illustrated p. 231). This flat openwork is peculiarly English, and belongs to the late Stuart period. It is exhibited on the handle at the back of the tray. The tray is as reticent as the silver of the Queen Anne period of the early eighteenth century.

The Eighteenth Century

The candlesticks of the eighteenth century vary considerably in character. The fluted column dependent on the octagonal base, with the relic of the old platform, is retained in a band with gadrooned edge. The illustration (p. 231) shows various styles, in the opening years of the eighteenth century. The baluster ornament, so common in Stuart days, was adopted, and ran through the eighteenth century, until classic influences swept it aside. This ornament, found as a terminal in silver knobs of early date, now became elongated and assumed various forms, with swelling and undulating form, sometimes with ornamented edge, till it became absorbed with the classic form of upright fluting and urn-like nozzle.

Candlesticks with removable nozzles were first introduced about 1758; the tall Corinthian column form is noticeable at this period. The urn sockets were in vogue from 1790 to 1798. It should be noted that removable nozzles when found on seventeenth-century pieces may be regarded as a later addition.

The provincial candlestick maker was not behind the London maker at the end of the eighteenth century. For instance, when the Sheffield Assay Office commenced operations in 1773 the classic style was at its height. The Adam brothers had impressed their personality on furniture and on architecture. Wedgwood had diverted Staffordshire into the paths of Olympus. Here it should be said that “Sheffield plate,” so called, is not Sheffield silver plate. It is difficult to explain. Plate is the technical term we employ in regard to solid gold or silver. Plated things which may be either gold plated or silver plated, are of baser metal, more frequently copper, covered with a layer of gold or of silver. Sheffield has won a renown for her antique silver plated ware. But here we have Sheffield silver plate, that is Sheffield silver, with the marks of the assay office. We give an example (illustrated p. 235), twenty years after the granting of the charter to Sheffield. Candlesticks, silver and silver-plated, were the specialties of Sheffield, and very beautiful they are.

The ribbon festoon with knots suggests the Louis Quinze period. This indicates the departure from the stern classic types; and the nozzle is removable, a style which was then in common use.

As a study, the candlestick exhibits infinite variety. The eighteenth century, from Queen Anne to the late George III period, offers many forms. The Stuart candlestick is on another plane, and appeals to the collector of rare examples.

The candle is something dead and gone; it stands on the threshold of modernity like some dim ancestral ghost of former days. The electric bulb is triumphant, paraffin is plebeian, and gas stretches back a century when Westminster Bridge was first lit by gas in 1813. Nobody has apostrophized a gas bracket or a paraffin lamp. But the candle is both historic and poetical and the candlestick offers a pleasing field to the collector.

SALE PRICES

EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.