The candlesticks are conceived in the antique style after the French manner as introduced to London around 1800 by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1831), and popularised through the publication of the guide to his Duchess Street mansion entitled Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. Their 'oil-lamp' nozzles stand on candelabrum-baluster stems with hollow-sided 'altar' pedestals and addorsed sphinx-monopodiae perched on their palmette-enriched plinths. The lamp-bowls, with flames issuing from their triple palm-decorated spouts, are embellished with bas-reliefs of butterflies approaching palm-shaped torches. Their balusters, issuing from a palm-calyx, are wreathed by triumphal palm-bearing nike figures attending flaming altars. The chimerical sphinxes have twisted hair after the bacchic manner, as discussed in Hope's guide (pl. LVII).
Although not illustrated on the table in the general view of the room, pl.VII, these candlesticks stood on one of the 'griffin' sideboard-tables in the Aurora breakfast-room. They are shown on the one of the tables in pl. XV, no.3. One of the console tables was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 7 July 1994, lot 131. The room's cornice was decorated with antique lamps, and its black marble chimneypiece was embellished with Night's emblems. The pedestal for Flaxman's sculpture of Cephalus and Aurora, like these candlesticks, featured torches emblematic of the dawn-goddess. The execution of these candlesticks can be credited to Alexis Decaix (d. 1811), the French 'bronze and ormolu manufacturer' of Rupert Street, Piccadilly, who was also patronised by George Prince of Wales, later King George IV (M. Chapman 'Thomas Hope's Vase and Alexis Decaix' Bulletin of the Victoria & Albert Museum, 1988, pp. 217-221)