The gueridon, or stand for candelabra and flower-vases, evolved from the Grecian altar-tripod such as featured on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, popularly known as the 'Lanthorn of Demosthenes'. This was illustrated in the architect James Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, 1762, p. 36. Stuart is credited with the design of related stands with bacchic ram-monopodiae at Shugborough, Staffordshire; but these are of table height, corresponding to the French 'Athenienne' advertised in 1773 by Jean-Henri Eberts (see: London, Christie's, 'Patronage Preserved', Exhibition Catalogue, 1991, no. 42). The architect Robert Adam (d. 1792) is credited with the design of related tall stands, with ram-headed legs and central sacred-urn, supplied in the mid-1770s to Robert Child (d. 1782; see: E. Harris, Osterley Park, London, 1994, p. 59). Further plinth-supported stands, surmounted by 'vase' candelabra, were illustrated by R. & J. Adam in their Works in Architecture, 1773, vol. 1, no. 1, pl. viii. This pair also features the ram-hooves, urns, gadrooned tazza-bowls and strigil fluted candelabrum-shats derived from the Works, but the ram-heads have been transferred from the feet to Ionic volutes. The latter spring from waisted vase stems with acanthus enrichments; and this unusual feature of confronted animal-heads, emerging from voluted scrolls, may derive from the eclectic style of G. B. Piranesi's Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Cammini, 1769.

A pair of carved limewood torchères of this model is ilustrated in C. Claxton-Stevens and S. Whittington, English Furniture: Norman Adams Collection, Woodbridge, 1983, p. 448