A Pair of Monumental Napoleon III Imari Porcelain Torchère Candelabra

Description

A Pair of Monumental Napoleon III Gilt-Bronze Mounted Japanese Imari Porcelain Thirteen-Light Floor Standing Torchère Candelabra. By Graux-Marly Frères, Paris.

Each floor standing torchère comprises a slender porcelain vase for the neck and a baluster vase for the body, all in Imari porcelain finely painted with trees, flowers, Hoho birds and trelliswork. Each surmounted by a rigourously modelled rococo candelabra issuing a central stem surrounded by twelve scrolled branches all terminating in foliate candle nozzles. Around the waist each has a scrollwork and rocaille belt with acanthus loop handles. The gilt-bronze base is formed from scrolled volutes with entwined dolphin supports. Each stands on a white marble base with concave sides.

Stamped to the back of the gilt-bronze ‘GM’.

Height, overall: 250 cm | 108 inches (8 1/4 feet) high
Width, at branches: 94 cm | 37 inches
Depth, at branches: 94 cm | 37 inches

(the white marble bases are 25 cm high; 70 cm; wide; 65 cm)

The fashion for mounting Chinese and Japanese porcelain in gilt-bronze reached its zenith under the Parisian marchands-merciers of the mid-18th century, who designed rococo bronze mountings to compliment the foliate decorated oriental porcelain. Revived from the mid-19th century, grandiose torchères of this type were also fashionable with America’s early captains of industry and ‘Robber Barons’, who lavishly furnished their palatial residences in the French taste. A large pair of ormolu-mounted Imari ‘candelabra’ are illustrated in The Great Room at Lynnwood Hall, the Philadelphia residence of P.A.B Widener (M. C. Kathrens, American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace Trumbauer, New York, 2002, p. 66).

The Great Room at Lynnwood Hall

Compare also a pair from Lambton Castle, County Durham, sold ‘The Property of Lord Lambton’, Christie’s, London, 8 December 1977, lot 9.

France, Circa 1860.