Pair of Ivory and Gilt Ceramic Double Candle Holders, Mirrored S-Scroll Form with Twin Sockets, c. 1945–1965

The Piece

A pair of low candle holders, each built as a single sweeping S-scroll rising from an oval stepped base and rolling over into a tight volute at the top.

Each one holds two candles, not one. A socket sits at the crest of the scroll, and a second sits lower and forward, cradled in the curl where the scroll turns back on itself — so a single holder puts two flames at two different heights.

The glaze is a warm ivory with a blush cast, high gloss and very even.

The gilding follows the form rather than covering it: a double band around the oval base, a fine line tracing the whole outer edge of the scroll, a broad gold wash on the back flare, and a heavy ring around each socket.

They are a true mirror pair — one scrolls left, the other right — which means two moulds, not one shape made twice. The bases are fully faced in brown felt.

History & Provenance

The mirroring is the first thing worth noticing. Anyone can sell two of the same candlestick. A handed pair, made left and right so they face each other across a mantel or a table, required the maker to cut and maintain two separate moulds for one product. It is a deliberate extra cost, it is why the pair reads as designed rather than assembled, and it is the reason a matched pair like this is worth more than two singles.

The gold is applied by hand and it shows. Look along the line running the edge of the scroll: it thickens and thins slightly, it follows the curve by eye, and it stops where the brush stopped. A printed or transferred gold is uniform. This was painted on and fired, which is also why it wears where fingers go — the socket rims have rubbed toward bronze while the protected areas stayed bright.

The form is Rococo borrowed, and knowingly. A scrolling C- or S-curve with volute terminals is eighteenth-century French ornamental vocabulary, and it came back into fashion repeatedly. On ivory-and-gold ceramic at this scale it belongs to the mid-twentieth-century decorative trade, when scroll-and-gilt giftware sold in enormous quantity for mantels, sideboards and dressing tables.

There is a specific reason no maker is named here. The base of each holder is completely covered in brown felt, applied to protect furniture, and any backstamp, impressed mark or paper label is underneath it. The felt has not been lifted or removed. The pair is therefore offered unattributed, on the understanding that a mark may well survive beneath.

Dated on the slip-cast construction, the hand-applied fired gilding and the state of the glaze and the wear: c. 1945–1965.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Two candle holders that each take two candles do something a plain pair cannot: they put four flames at four different heights from two objects.

That is the whole trick of good candlelight. Flames all at one level read flat; staggered, they give a room depth. Set the pair facing each other on a mantel, at either end of a sideboard, or flanking a mirror, and the mirroring means they frame whatever sits between them instead of just repeating.

They are also low, which makes them usable on a dining table. Nobody has to look around them, and four small flames down the middle of a table light faces properly.

Ivory and gold is one of the safest palettes there is. It sits on dark wood, painted furniture, marble and glass; it works at Christmas and at Easter and at a Tuesday dinner; and it goes with brass, with silver, and with plain white china.

A note on care, and with gilded ceramic there are two things that destroy the gold. Never put these in a dishwasher and never put them in a microwave. Detergent strips fired gilding within a few cycles and it does not come back; gold in a microwave arcs.

Do not dig wax out of the sockets with anything metal. Put the holder in the freezer for half an hour and the wax shrinks and lifts out whole — a knife or a screwdriver will take the gold ring off the socket rim with it, and that ring is the most worn part already.

Wash by hand in warm water with a little mild soap, and dry with a soft cloth. Use no abrasive pad, no scouring cream, no bleach and no descaling or citrus cleaner on the gilded areas. Keep the felt bases dry, since felt holds water against a surface and will mark furniture.

Burn tapers that fit the sockets snugly rather than forcing an oversized candle in, never let one burn down into the socket, and keep them out of a draught so the flame does not lick the gilt.