Lot Essay
These George II vase or candelabra stands, with picturesque serpentined and voluted claws, have Gothic trefoil-cusped and Chinese ribbon-fretted trays. While the same patterned frets link their two-tiered tripods of antique-flowered cloumns, whose altar-plinth ties are flowered and fretted with antique-stippled Gothic arches. Similar fretted patterns for tripod-stands and wall-brackets for china-jars or candelabra featured in Matthias Darly and George Edwards New Book of Chinese Designs, 1754, figs. 85-89, and in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director issued in the same year. In particular they relate to Chippendale's 1753 pattern for a fretted two tier 'Candle Stand' in the Chinese taste, pl. CXX (L. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 303). It may be significant that these designs do not appear in the 3rd edition of 1763.
The distinctive scroll foot with a triangular pad is also used on an equally unusual pair of torcheres that are now in the Noel Terry collection at Fairfax House, York (P. Brown, Catalogue, York, 1987, p. 125, no. 123) but which were originally in the collection of Earl Howe at Penn House, Buckinghamshire. Three pairs of tripod torcheres in the Samuel Messer collection have blind fretwork collars below ungalleried trefoil tops (sold in these Rooms, 5 December 1991, lots 93, 94 and 95).
The distinctive scroll foot with a triangular pad is also used on an equally unusual pair of torcheres that are now in the Noel Terry collection at Fairfax House, York (P. Brown, Catalogue, York, 1987, p. 125, no. 123) but which were originally in the collection of Earl Howe at Penn House, Buckinghamshire. Three pairs of tripod torcheres in the Samuel Messer collection have blind fretwork collars below ungalleried trefoil tops (sold in these Rooms, 5 December 1991, lots 93, 94 and 95).