CIRCA 1720, MOUNTED AS CANDLESTICKS

These monumental candlesticks, representing three of the five Orders of Classical Architecture and carved from walnut, are intriguing survivals from the early era of British Classical architecture. These intriguing models were mounted as candlesticks shortly after they were made but they were perhaps conceived as models from which to draw, and may have been intended for an architect's office. The manner of carving is comparable with that employed in the great baroque churches of Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, commissioned following the great fire of London in 1666. The columns to the reredos in Hawkesmoor's Church of St Alfege, Greenwich ( built 1711-1714), for example, compare favourably. The reredos at St Alfege's was one of the few elements of the original carving to the interior of that church which Professor Sir Albert Richardson was able to save when he restored the church following a direct hit from a German bomb during the Blitz.