Pair of Pressed Glass Candlesticks, Stepped Tiers with Crown-Notched Socket and Flared Foot, c. 1960–2000

The Piece

A matched pair of clear glass candlesticks, and the whole design is one idea repeated at four scales: a stack of stepped tiers, each one ringed with blocky rectangular facets, widening as it descends until it flares out into a broad circular foot.

The socket at the top is the flourish. It sits in an octagonal collar with a rim cut into eight notches, so the profile reads as a small crown or a coronet. Inside, the well is plain and round, sized for a standard taper.

The foot is a wide flared disc with a smooth rolled edge and radiating panels moulded into the underside, which is what throws the light back up through the stem. Set them on a polished table and the reflection doubles them.

The glass is bright and colourless, with no straw or grey cast, and the facets are crisp enough to break light into hard points along every step.

History & Provenance

These are pressed glass, not cut crystal, and the difference is worth understanding before you buy rather than after.

Cut glass is blown or moulded plain and then ground, facet by facet, against a spinning wheel by a person who trained for years. Pressed glass takes its entire pattern from the mould in a single operation: molten glass into an iron mould, a plunger down into it, and the piece comes out finished. The mechanical press was an American invention of the 1820s, and it is the reason ordinary households got patterned glass at all — it collapsed the cost of something that had been a luxury into something a factory could turn out by the thousand.

You can see the evidence on these. Fine vertical mould seams run up the stem, and the facets meet at slightly softened edges rather than the sharp arrises a cutting wheel leaves. Neither is a flaw. It is simply how the object was made, and we would rather name it than let a photograph imply hand-cut crystal.

No maker's mark is visible on the socket, the stem, or the foot. The glass is water-clear with none of the grey or straw tint that older pressed glass usually carries, which places these in the post-war era rather than earlier, and the range below reflects what the object itself supports rather than a guess dressed up as a date.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Candlelight is the cheapest thing you can do to a room and the most effective, and a pair of glass sticks is the least committal way to get there. Unlit they read as nothing much — clear glass takes the colour of whatever is behind it and stays out of the way. Lit, the stepped facets catch the flame and hand it back in a dozen small pieces.

The practical case is that a pair is what a table actually needs. One candlestick is an ornament; two are a setting. These are short enough to see over across a dinner table, which the tall ones never are, and heavy enough at the foot that a sleeve will not take them over.

They also work well away from a table entirely — on a mantel, flanking a mirror, on a bathroom counter, or on a windowsill where the daylight does the work instead of the flame. Clear glass is the one finish that never argues with a room's existing metals or woods.

A note on care: hand wash in warm water with a mild detergent and dry with a soft cloth. Keep them out of the dishwasher — over repeated cycles the detergent etches pressed glass and leaves a permanent cloudiness that no amount of polishing will remove. To get wax out of the socket, put the candlestick in the freezer for an hour and the wax will shrink and lift out in one piece; do not pick at it with a knife, which is how sockets get chipped. Never pour hot water over cold glass or run a candle down to the last inch, since sustained heat at the socket can crack it.