Wrought Iron Branch and Leaf Five Light Candelabra, c. 1930–1970

The Piece

A five light candelabra worked in iron as a flowering branch. A central trunk rises from a circular ring base and divides into four arms that sweep out low and level to either side, with a fifth pan carried on the trunk itself above the others. Each arm ends in a wide shallow dish with a sharp pricket at its center, so the five flames sit in a staggered line rather than in a row, the middle one standing proud. Leaves are set along the stems at irregular intervals, each one pressed with a central vein and side ribs, then crimped around the rod so it sits at its own angle the way a real leaf does.

The pans repay a close look. Each is dished by hand rather than turned, and the sweep of the hammer still shows as a soft spiral across the inside face. The rims are not true circles. They run slightly out of round and vary in thickness, which is what a hand raised dish does and what a spun one never does. Each pricket is a tapered point filed down by hand, the file facets still legible along its length. The stems are chiseled with short parallel strokes that read as bark, and the joints where branch meets branch have been dressed back flush and then textured over so the transition disappears into the grain.

The finish is a dark gray green laid over warm ochre, now worn through on the high points and across every pan, where a deep orange iron oxide has come up through from beneath and spread outward from the center of each dish.

History & Provenance

There is no maker's mark anywhere on the piece. The parallel lines cut into the stems near the joints are decorative bark texture rather than a stamp, and they run across the whole armature rather than appearing once in the way a touchmark would.

What the metal shows is forge work throughout. Hand dished pans with untrue rims, hand filed prickets, joints dressed and retextured by hand, and leaves set each at its own angle rather than repeated to a pattern. The pressed leaves are the one bought in component, and that is ordinary. Stamped leaf blanks have been sold to smiths as stock for well over a century, and a forge buying its leaves and making everything else is the normal way this work has always been done.

The corrosion is the other thing worth weighing. It is not a surface tint. The pans are pitted through across their whole face, with the oxide blooming outward from the pricket where moisture and spent wax would have gathered, and that is a long exposure rather than a finishing effect. Against that, rust is a function of damp rather than of years, and an antiqued finish of this kind is laid over a warm ground to begin with, so it cannot be read as a clock.

Taken together the evidence says hand made in a working forge, used for a long time, and carrying no mark or document to fix it. The range given reflects the handwork and the depth of the corrosion. It is not drawn from style, and it is not offered as more than the metal will carry.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Low and wide is the hard thing to find in a candelabra, and this one is built for a table you intend to eat at. The arms carry the lights out sideways instead of up, so nobody is looking through a thicket to see the person opposite, and the one raised pan in the middle keeps the line from going flat. Run it down the center of a long table, or set it on a sideboard or a mantel where the branch can spread without crowding anything.

The pans are generous, which matters more than it sounds. A wide dish catches the drip from a pillar candle instead of letting it run down onto the wood, and it gives you somewhere to set a candle of real diameter rather than a thin taper that burns out over one course. Unlit it still reads, because the branch and the leaves are good enough to carry the piece as a sculpture in daylight. The rust showing through the finish is the best thing about it, and it should be left exactly as it is.