拍品专文
Designed in the Louis XIV 'Roman' fashion, this style was introduced to Britain by William IIIs Paris-trained 'architect' Daniel Marot (d. 1752), and related stands introduced in the late 1690s to Hampton Court Palace, were executed by the Paris-trained sculptor-carver Jean Pelletier (see T. Murdoch, 'Jean, René and Thomas Pelletier, Part I', Burlington Magazine, November 1997, pp. 732-742). This pattern of satyr mask also features on a pier-table, bearing an Earl's coronet-ensigned cipher at Chatsworth, Derbyshire (O.Brackett, An Encyclopaedia of English Furniture, 1927, p. 101).
A related pair of stands, formerly at Avebury Manor, Wiltshire, are now at Temple Newsam, Leeds (C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, p. 291, no. 351).
THE DESIGN
The vase candelabra guèridon stands are enwreathed by golden foliage and intended as part of a window-pier set with en suite table and mirror. Conceived in the Louis Quatorze 'Roman' fashion as festive tripodic altars, they evoke the control of the Elements by the light-and-poetry deity Apollo. Their libation-patera trays are raised on triumphal palms issuing from krater urns, that are gadrooned with reeds sacred to Pan. The feather-crowned heads of the Arcadian deity's satyr companions cap the hermed and truss-scrolled pilasters of their laurel-festooned 'vase' balusters, which are raised on Ionic wave-voluted 'claws' with reed-gadrooned plinths.