LATE 18TH CENTURY

English ormolu candelabra were made in direct competition with French and Continental manufacture yet are much more scarce since the English elite fashionable market was not large enough to support the cost of manufacture. The quality of the gilding on this pair of candelabra is remarkable and barely worn. They evoke the work of the Birmingham entrepreneur and manufacturer Matthew Boulton (d.1809) who took immense pains to perfect the quality and colour of his gilding, and the bronze or base metal of most suitable mixture to receive it. During the lifetime of Boulton's business he established a reputation for the quality of his wares and was held in high esteem; in 1795 was called upon to advise on the claims against the Prince of Wales by suppliers of ‘articles in or moulu’. Yet he always struggled to make money and the business eventually failed in the 1790s.

Little is known of other English craftsmen who were producing gilded ornamental metal wares in the eighteenth century as there was no guild of casters or gilders; English workers failed to achieve the same powerful positions as did their counterparts in France, where the names of mount makers frequently occur in contemporary accounts and inventories, including the royal archives.