AN EMPIRE ORMOLU AND CUT GREY-COLORED GLASS NINE-LIGHT CANDELABRUM

POSSIBLY RUSSIAN, CIRCA 1810

Details
AN EMPIRE ORMOLU AND CUT GREY-COLORED GLASS NINE-LIGHT CANDELABRUM
Possibly Russian, circa 1810
With two tiers of outscrolled trumpet-form candlebranches cast with leaf-tips and flowerheads issuing foliate scrolls and centered by an urn-form shaft, on a serpentine-cut columnar form support with foliate-cast capital and base raised on a geometric-cut cylindrical base with husk-cast collar, on a square stepped base, bearing the stamp THOMIRE PARIS
51in. (145.5cm.) high, 18in. (47cm.) diameter
Provenance
By repute, Tsarske-Selo Palace, St. Petersburg

Lot Essay

Candelabra of this type with the unusual glass-stem feature are found
in several views of Russian palaces. In a watercolor of the Arabesque
Hall at Tsarske-Selo painted by L. Premazzi, circa 1850, they appear at the corners and in the center of the room (Ivan Petrovich Sautov,
Tsarske Selo, Paris, 1992, p. 46, pl. 16). They are also featured in the Great Hall (Nikolaevhall) in the Winter palace illustrated in a 1866 watercolor by K. Uchtomsky aligned along the walls and placed at intervals with Corinthian columns (E. A. Bartenev and V.N. Batazhkova, Russian Interiors of the XVIII-XIX Centuries, Leningrad, 1977, p. 84). They are representative of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna's taste for decorative bronzes and other object d'art which they imported in great quantities following the lift on the ban on all imports from France by the Emperor in 1789 (see I. Zeck, 'Bronzes d'ameublement et meubles franais achets par Paul Ier pour le chteau de Saint-Michael de Petersbourg en 1789-1799,' Bulletin de la Socit de l'Histoire de l'Art franais, 1994, pp. 141-57).

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