Georgian Style Reeded Baluster Candlestick, Verdigris and Gilt Finish, Single, c. 1960–1985

The Piece

A Georgian style reeded baluster candlestick in cast metal under a verdigris and gilt finish, the single tall taper holder that belongs on a nightstand, a writing desk or the end of a mantel, where a pair would be too formal and nothing at all would be a loss. The form descends directly from the brass candlesticks of eighteenth century Birmingham and Boston: a slender vase-shaped baluster cut with vertical reeds from collar to foot, swelling at the belly and drawing in to a turned ring beneath a plain tapering socket, which opens at the top into a wide, shallow, dished drip pan. The baluster rises from a knopped collar on a stepped and domed circular foot with a broad flat rim, the proportions tall and quiet, the silhouette unbroken by ornament beyond the reeding itself.

The surface is where this candlestick earns its place. Over a bright gilt ground the maker laid a glaze of viridian green and raw umber and wiped it back by hand, so that the gold breaks through along every reed and on the rim of the foot while the hollows between hold a deep, bottle-green patina that reads as a century of handling. The effect is the antiqued bronze of a country house library rather than the polish of a new brass candlestick, and the color shifts from green to gold to brown as the light moves across it. The underside is finished with a disc of black felt, protecting the table and carrying the remains of a small gold foil import label at the center.

The candlestick stands straight and true, with no dents, splits or repairs, the socket round and ready for a standard taper. The finish is in good order, with the wear concentrated on the reeds and the foot rim exactly where it was meant to be, and the drip pan is darkened inside from candles burned. The felt is intact and lightly worn; the label is rubbed past reading. This is a single candlestick, not one of a pair, and it is offered as found, cleaned but not refinished.

History & Provenance

The reeded baluster is one of the enduring forms of the candlestick, cast in brass by the founders of Birmingham and Bristol from the 1760s and copied in the American colonies from Boston to Philadelphia, where a pair stood on every parlor mantel until the oil lamp pushed them to the sideboard. The form never left production. In the decades after the Second World War the decorative import houses of Italy, India and Japan cast it again in brass, bronze and spelter for the American traditional interior, and finished it to order for department stores and gift shops that sold it as the candlestick for a Colonial dining room or an Early American den. The antiqued verdigris treatment on this example, a gold base coat glazed with green and brown and rubbed back to the metal, is the signature finish of that trade from the 1950s through the 1980s, and the black felt base with a foil label is how those houses finished the underside of everything they shipped. A piece like this was bought new to look old, and half a century later it has become what it imitated.

No maker's mark is legible, the foil label being worn past reading, and the candlestick is offered as an unattributed import. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the cast metal body, the gilt ground under a glazed verdigris finish, the felted underside and the foil import label are all consistent with manufacture between about 1960 and 1985.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A single candlestick is the most useful one in the house. On a nightstand it holds the candle that is lit for ten minutes before sleep; on a desk it is the one object that is not paper; on a bathroom counter, a kitchen island or the corner of a mantel it supplies the vertical line a vignette needs. The green and gold finish keeps company with polished brass and with painted furniture, with marble and with walnut, and it is at home in a traditional room, a cottage bedroom or a collected modern one. Give it a plain ivory or beeswax taper and let the wax run; the drip pan was made for it. For a shop or designer client it is the small, brass-toned, verdigris accent that finishes a tablescape, fills the gap in a mantel arrangement and sells with a candle in it.