Italian Gilt Tole Flowering Branch Candle Sconce, Florentine, c. 1950–1970

The Piece

A tall Italian gilt tole wall sconce in the form of a flowering branch, the Florentine metalwork that furnished the Hollywood Regency interiors of the 1950s and 1960s. A central stem rises from a pair of scrolled C-curves at the base, carrying eleven hand-cut and folded leaves set in opposed pairs up its length, with a single leaf at the tip and small acorn-shaped buds on short wire stems between the leaves. Two candle arms branch out low on the stem, each curling into an open scroll and finishing in a tulip-form candle cup with pointed petals set in a flat five-petal drip pan. At the base, the stem is wrapped in a cluster of smaller leaves and finishes in a long, serrated, downturned acanthus leaf that hangs below the scrolls.

The metal is sheet iron and wire, cut, pressed and brazed by hand, and the surface is the real Florentine finish rather than gold paint: gold leaf laid over a red bole ground, then rubbed and toned so the red shows through at the edges and the high points, with a dark antiquing wash in the hollows of the leaves. The gilding is warm and bright on the leaf faces and has worn to red bole and bare metal along the stem and the scrolls, which is exactly how these pieces were meant to age. The sconce hangs from a single loop at the back of the stem and throws a dramatic leaf shadow on the wall when lit from the side.

The piece is complete and sound. All eleven leaves, the buds, both candle cups and the acanthus drop are present, the arms are firm, and nothing has been bent or re-soldered. The gilt has honest wear along the stem and at the leaf edges and no flaking. The candle cups are clean and take a standard taper.

History & Provenance

Gilt tole sconces like this one came out of the Florentine metal workshops that supplied the American decorator trade from the end of the war into the 1970s. The craft was old, the gilding of cut sheet iron over a red bole ground goes back to the baroque church furnishings of Tuscany, but the forms were new: wheat sheaves, flowering branches, lilies and sunflowers made for the Hollywood Regency rooms of Dorothy Draper and her followers, where a pair flanked a mirror or a single tall branch lit a hall. They were sold through the New York and Los Angeles importers, often with a paper Made in Italy label that rarely survives, and the best examples were made by hand in small shops in Florence rather than stamped out.

This sconce carries no label or stamp and is offered as an unattributed Italian gilt tole piece. The dating rests on the construction and the finish rather than style alone: the hand-cut and brazed sheet iron, the wire bud stems, the gold leaf over red bole with an antiquing wash and the single-loop hanger are all consistent with Florentine workshop production between about 1950 and 1970.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A tall gilt branch is one of the easiest ways to put sculpture on a wall. This one reads as a drawing in gold from across the room and throws a second drawing in shadow when a lamp or a window catches it from the side, so it does its work with or without candles in it. It belongs beside a mirror in an entry, on the wall of a dining room where the candlelight will flicker across the leaves, or over a console in a bedroom, and it is as good against white plaster as against the deep greens and blacks of a jewel-box room. It carries the Hollywood Regency look without the kitsch, and it mixes with Italian giltwood, French provincial and modern pieces alike. For a shop or designer client it is the large, complete, honestly worn Florentine sconce that the trade asks for, and a natural anchor for a vignette of gilt and greenery.