PROBABLY CIRCA 1700, THE BRANCHES REPLACED IN THE 19TH CENTURY

These golden sconces, celebrating the Elements, are designed in the Louis Quatorze fashion popularised by the Paris-trained architect Daniel Marot (d.1752), author of a Nouveaux Livre d'Orfèvrerie, issued in The Hague around 1700. The ribbon-scrolled tablets are embossed with Cupids attending baldachino drapery to reveal heraldic escutcheons displayed above flower festooned bas-reliefs of Apollo and Juno. The latter, with attendant Peacock, personifies the Element of Air; while sun-rayed Apollo is depicted amongst clouds to recall his control of the Elements according to the Roman quote Collegit ut Spargat about his ability to gather clouds around him for their better dispersal.

Such repoussé armorial candle-sconces were principally produced by Huguenot metal-workers - not only in brass but also in silver and silvered-brass. All too often destroyed as a result of the introduction of gas lighting, documented late 17th Century pairs in brass include those bearing the arms of Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, which was supplied to Kiveton Park, Yorkshire and subsequently moved to Hornby Castle, Yorkshire, where they remained until circa 1920.

A closely related pair of sconces in silvered-copper, dated to circa 1720, is in the Schlossmuseum, Berlin (illustrated in G. Henriot, Le Luminaire de la Renaissance au XIXème siècle, Paris, 1993, pl.137.