拍品專文
Conceived in the French antique manner, their ormolu calix of palm-wrapped acanthus derives from one of the Vatican's Roman tripod-candelabrum popularised by G.B. Piranesi's, Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi.., Rome, 1778, pls. 50-51 and, like their truncated Tuscan 'marble' pillars, the latter is also embellished with festive bacchic lion-masks (J. Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, San Francisco, vol. II, 1994, no. 936). Related candelabra were manufactured by the clock-manufacturer and bronze-founder Benjamain Vulliamy (d.1821) of Pall Mall, and a set of four, bearing his brand with the date 1811, are likely to have been acquired for Harewood House, Yorkshire by Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood (d.1841) (illustrated in A. Esson, Harewood, Yorkshire, (Guide Book), Leicester, 1996, p. 28). Mr. Walmesby of Lambeth is recorded as the 'slater', employed by Messrs. Vulliamy at this period (F. Wadsworth, 'Some early 19th Century workmen', Antiquarian Horology, Summer 1991, p. 410).