Lot Essay
CARLTON HOUSE AND THE PRINCE OF WALES
In 1783, a twenty-one year old George, the Prince of Wales, was presented with Carlton House in Pall Mall as his London residence. The property had been acquired by the Royal family by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who purchased it from Lord Burlington's mother in 1732.
Over the next few decades, the future king George IV, embarked on a massive and extravagant project to alter, enlarge, decorate and redecorate the palace in a manner that was repeated at his seaside pavilion at Brighton, and later Buckingham Palace. The Prince of Wales employed a series of London's top architects to carry out the transformations including Sir William Chambers (d.1796), Henry Holland (d.1806), James Wyatt (d.1813), Thomas Hopper (d.1856) and John Nash (d.1835). The interior decoration was entrusted to professionals including Dominique Daguerre, and amateurs including friends and members of his household staff. Louis Weltje, Clerk of the Kitchen, and Francois Benois, his Confectioner exerted an influence on his acquisitions. His friends Lord Yarmouth (later Marquess of Hereford, d.1842) and Walsh Porter (d.1809) played a particularly significant role in advising the Prince on works of art and interior decoration.
The Prince of Wales continued to spend lavish amounts on Carlton House until he succeeded his father as king and moved into Buckingham Palace in 1820. At this point, Carlton House became redundant and further investment in the palace unjustified. The house was demolished in 1827 and many of its contents were dispersed to Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace.
THE CIRCULAR ROOM
The Circular Room (measuring 40 feet in diameter) was located on the enfilade on the West front of the house. The room was originally designed by Henry Holland as a 'Circular Music Room' in 1788 and its decoration was sober and neoclassical. The building began in 1786 and continued until around 1794. The room's original purpose as a Music Room was short-lived and by 1794, the room was designated as a Second Drawing Room. In 1804, the Prince decided to convert the room into a Dining Room and entrusted James Wyatt to make the appropriate alterations.
This opulent new interior can be appreciated in a drawing executed by Charles Wild of circa 1817 -- one of a set of twenty-four which were engraved and published by William Henry Pyne in his third volume of The History of Royal Residences in 1819. A similar drawing by Wild, which was exhibited by the Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1819, is reproduced here. Three of the Vulliamy candelabra are shown in this drawing including two on their black marble bases, and another from the group raised on Breccia marble pedestals which flanked the doorways. The doorway visible in the drawing led into the Throne Room situated to the south. This rendering shows a vibrant color scheme of primarily orange, blue, red, black and green which is further enriched by silver, bronze and cut-glass embellishments. The chimneypieces which support the candelabra, installed in 1807, were the third set provided for the room. The bronze chimney supports cast as Hercules's head with lion pelt were supplied by the Vulliamys at a cost of 159 12s and these match the carved console table bases. The stucco frieze is painted with bronzed boys and garlands echoing the design of the candelabra, and this is supported on red porphyry columns with silvered capitals. In all, the room epitomized the 'glitter' of the Prince's palace, which one visitor in 1813 found 'quite eblouissant'. Walsh Porter may have been largely responsible for the decoration and furnishing of this room, as it was he who initiated the refurbishing of the blue silk hangings in 1807 (Carlton House: The Past Glories of George IV's Palace, op.cit, pp.213-214).
VULLIAMY & SON AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE CANDELABRA
These candelabra (now lacking their six-light fittings) are from a group of sixteen in total supplied for the Circular Dining Room between 1810 and 1814 by the firm of Vulliamy & Son, London. One of the pair is inscribed 'Published as the Act directs/By B.Vulliamy & Son/Jan.1.1810/LONDON'. The firm of Vulliamy, headed by Benjamin Vulliamy (d.1811) and his son Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (d.1854), was primarily known by its role as Royal clockmakers. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the business at 74 Pall Mall encompassed such a full range of activities that B.L.Vulliamy was to earn the epithet 'the Prince's furniture man'. A main concern of the enterprise was the sale of candelabra and other decorative objects in bronze, ormolu and marble. This trade was heightened by the the war with France, the concomitant boom in the market for luxury goods and the reduced supply by the traditional suppliers of such goods to Britain, the French marchands-merciers. The Vulliamys' connections with the royal family and fashionable society and their network with manufacturers and suppliers gave them a pre-eminent position in the luxury goods market (R.Smith, 'Vulliamy and the Kinnaird candelabra', Apollo, January 1997, pp.30-34).
The design for these candelabra typifies the Roman fashion that was introduced at Carlton House by the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham (d.1842). The Vulliamys based their designs on antique models contained in the various volumes on architecture and design in their extensive library. This model evolves from the antique Villa Albani cistern, illustrated in G.B.Piranesi's Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi... published in Rome in 1778. The Vulliamys may also have gained inspiration for such Atlas figures from a French clock illustrated in their copy of Grollier de Serviere's Recueil d'ouvrages curieux de mathematique et de mecanique, 1719 (see Harris, Bellaigue and Millar, Buckingham Palace, 1968, p.156). The firm often copied French objects and had a close affiliation with the Parisian bronze manufacturers, Delafontaine, who supplied ormolu objects for the firm (G.de Bellaigue, 'The Vulliamys and France', Furniture History, 1967, pp.45-53).
The Vulliamys did not maintain a large workshop and systematically sub-contracted individual tasks to a number of independent specialists while maintaining a supervisory role in the production process. They cultivated long-term working relationships with many suppliers and the same artisans appear repeatedly in the Vulliamy supply ledgers called the Ornament Book (now in the Public Record Office). The entry pertaining to the manufacture of the Carlton House candelabra is unusually detailed showing the complexity of producing these objects.
The first payments were made to the various artisans and sub-contractors involved in preparing the patterns. Based on the information available in the Ornament Book 1809-1815, it is probable that the initial models and patterns were commissioned as early as 1808. While the design was almost certainly supplied by the Vulliamys, the next most important artistic contribution came from the sculptor James Smith (d.1815) who in April 1809 prepared the plaster model for the three boys at a cost of 26, as well as the model of the ox skulls (1 15s). Smith, a Gold Medallist at the Royal Academy, was a pupil of Locatelli and assistant to John Flaxman and Charles Rossi. He is best known for his large marble monument to Admiral Nelson in the London Guildhall which was unveiled in 1810, the same year the first candelabra were supplied to Carlton House (R.Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, 1953). Smith worked for the Vulliamys on many important projects including the pair of chimneypieces supplied for the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House (and now at Windsor Castle) for which he prepared the models of the satyr uprights (see G.de Bellaigue, 'The Crimson Drawing Room, Carlton House', Furniture History, 1990, pp.17-18, figs.2-3). The candelabras' pattern for the vine-leaf festoons and lotus flower lights (lacking on these examples) was supplied by the carver Hess, and the pattern for the body of the tazza was carved by Abingdon. Many of the specialist metal-workers who prepared the metal patterns were also employed in the actual production of these objects -- casting, filing, chasing, riffling and bronzing. These included Catherwood, who prepared the bronze casting for the boys and ox skulls and Barnett who cast the vine festoons, tazza, etc. Chasing was entrusted to Barker and Lacey, riffling to Couling and the bronzing to Johnston & Co. Workmen called Jacot, Turner and Butler were paid at a day-rate and were probably the only people who could be regarded as directly employed by Vulliamy & Son. In all, it would appear that eighteen craftsmen were involved in the production of the first six pairs of candelabra and paid a total of 1174 17s 2p. The cost of 315 per pair, or 1890 in total, was expensive relative to other objects supplied by the firm and particularly since these objects were not gilded. The seemingly large difference between expenses and amount charged to the Prince takes into account Vulliamy's role in supplying the design and financing and supervising the production.
THE DELIVERY OF THE CANDELABRA
The account states that the Prince personally inspected and approved the model which suggests an unusual degree of personal involvement in the production of these objects. The design of the candelabra was 'made on purpose' for the Prince of Wales and based on the Daybooks, this model was not supplied to any other clients.
There were at least eight pairs supplied to the Prince of Wales: four pairs delivered 23 April 1810; two pairs on 8 June 1811 and two pairs on 30 August 1814 (the Daybook records finish in 1814). The last two pairs were on 'Breschia' marble pedestals with circular plinths and are almost certainly the candelabra which stand on tripod stands and flank the doorways to the Circular Room as shown in the Wild watercolor. Our two examples are numbered '5' and '10' which support that they were included in the first two deliveries.
The entry from Vulliamy's Daybook of 23 April 1810 reads as follows:
Delivered a Pair of very Large Magnificent Bronze Candelabra
for 6 Lights ea. composed of 3 Bronze Boys Standing upon
a Black Marble Pedestal carrying a Tazza upon Their
Shoulders which contains the Nozzles for the Lights
in the Shape of Lotus Flowers the Pedestals are
enriched with 3 Oxes, skulls & 3 festoons of Vine
Leaves after the Antique in very high relief with
Bronze Mouldings & top resting upon a Square Black
Ebony Plinth. The Design for the Candelabra was
made on purpose for His Royal Highness, the Model
was inspected by H R H & approved of, & the patterns
all made on purpose, at a very heavy expense. The
whole of the work is finished in the highest & most
perfect manner @ 300 GsP.Pr................................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ Rcd 1260. ___.___
The full set of sixteen candelabra was removed to Windsor Castle in 1828 after the demolition of Carlton House. By the time of the 1867 inventory, only fourteen remained in the collection. There is no record of the sale of these two remaining candelabra and it is not known why they left the collection. Their history is unknown until they were purchased by the father of the current owner in 1946-1947.
We would like to thank Roger Smith for his kind assistance with this catalogue entry. Mr. Smith is currently preparing a detailed study of the Vulliamy firm for future publication.
In 1783, a twenty-one year old George, the Prince of Wales, was presented with Carlton House in Pall Mall as his London residence. The property had been acquired by the Royal family by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who purchased it from Lord Burlington's mother in 1732.
Over the next few decades, the future king George IV, embarked on a massive and extravagant project to alter, enlarge, decorate and redecorate the palace in a manner that was repeated at his seaside pavilion at Brighton, and later Buckingham Palace. The Prince of Wales employed a series of London's top architects to carry out the transformations including Sir William Chambers (d.1796), Henry Holland (d.1806), James Wyatt (d.1813), Thomas Hopper (d.1856) and John Nash (d.1835). The interior decoration was entrusted to professionals including Dominique Daguerre, and amateurs including friends and members of his household staff. Louis Weltje, Clerk of the Kitchen, and Francois Benois, his Confectioner exerted an influence on his acquisitions. His friends Lord Yarmouth (later Marquess of Hereford, d.1842) and Walsh Porter (d.1809) played a particularly significant role in advising the Prince on works of art and interior decoration.
The Prince of Wales continued to spend lavish amounts on Carlton House until he succeeded his father as king and moved into Buckingham Palace in 1820. At this point, Carlton House became redundant and further investment in the palace unjustified. The house was demolished in 1827 and many of its contents were dispersed to Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace.
THE CIRCULAR ROOM
The Circular Room (measuring 40 feet in diameter) was located on the enfilade on the West front of the house. The room was originally designed by Henry Holland as a 'Circular Music Room' in 1788 and its decoration was sober and neoclassical. The building began in 1786 and continued until around 1794. The room's original purpose as a Music Room was short-lived and by 1794, the room was designated as a Second Drawing Room. In 1804, the Prince decided to convert the room into a Dining Room and entrusted James Wyatt to make the appropriate alterations.
This opulent new interior can be appreciated in a drawing executed by Charles Wild of circa 1817 -- one of a set of twenty-four which were engraved and published by William Henry Pyne in his third volume of The History of Royal Residences in 1819. A similar drawing by Wild, which was exhibited by the Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1819, is reproduced here. Three of the Vulliamy candelabra are shown in this drawing including two on their black marble bases, and another from the group raised on Breccia marble pedestals which flanked the doorways. The doorway visible in the drawing led into the Throne Room situated to the south. This rendering shows a vibrant color scheme of primarily orange, blue, red, black and green which is further enriched by silver, bronze and cut-glass embellishments. The chimneypieces which support the candelabra, installed in 1807, were the third set provided for the room. The bronze chimney supports cast as Hercules's head with lion pelt were supplied by the Vulliamys at a cost of 159 12s and these match the carved console table bases. The stucco frieze is painted with bronzed boys and garlands echoing the design of the candelabra, and this is supported on red porphyry columns with silvered capitals. In all, the room epitomized the 'glitter' of the Prince's palace, which one visitor in 1813 found 'quite eblouissant'. Walsh Porter may have been largely responsible for the decoration and furnishing of this room, as it was he who initiated the refurbishing of the blue silk hangings in 1807 (Carlton House: The Past Glories of George IV's Palace, op.cit, pp.213-214).
VULLIAMY & SON AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE CANDELABRA
These candelabra (now lacking their six-light fittings) are from a group of sixteen in total supplied for the Circular Dining Room between 1810 and 1814 by the firm of Vulliamy & Son, London. One of the pair is inscribed 'Published as the Act directs/By B.Vulliamy & Son/Jan.1.1810/LONDON'. The firm of Vulliamy, headed by Benjamin Vulliamy (d.1811) and his son Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (d.1854), was primarily known by its role as Royal clockmakers. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the business at 74 Pall Mall encompassed such a full range of activities that B.L.Vulliamy was to earn the epithet 'the Prince's furniture man'. A main concern of the enterprise was the sale of candelabra and other decorative objects in bronze, ormolu and marble. This trade was heightened by the the war with France, the concomitant boom in the market for luxury goods and the reduced supply by the traditional suppliers of such goods to Britain, the French marchands-merciers. The Vulliamys' connections with the royal family and fashionable society and their network with manufacturers and suppliers gave them a pre-eminent position in the luxury goods market (R.Smith, 'Vulliamy and the Kinnaird candelabra', Apollo, January 1997, pp.30-34).
The design for these candelabra typifies the Roman fashion that was introduced at Carlton House by the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham (d.1842). The Vulliamys based their designs on antique models contained in the various volumes on architecture and design in their extensive library. This model evolves from the antique Villa Albani cistern, illustrated in G.B.Piranesi's Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi... published in Rome in 1778. The Vulliamys may also have gained inspiration for such Atlas figures from a French clock illustrated in their copy of Grollier de Serviere's Recueil d'ouvrages curieux de mathematique et de mecanique, 1719 (see Harris, Bellaigue and Millar, Buckingham Palace, 1968, p.156). The firm often copied French objects and had a close affiliation with the Parisian bronze manufacturers, Delafontaine, who supplied ormolu objects for the firm (G.de Bellaigue, 'The Vulliamys and France', Furniture History, 1967, pp.45-53).
The Vulliamys did not maintain a large workshop and systematically sub-contracted individual tasks to a number of independent specialists while maintaining a supervisory role in the production process. They cultivated long-term working relationships with many suppliers and the same artisans appear repeatedly in the Vulliamy supply ledgers called the Ornament Book (now in the Public Record Office). The entry pertaining to the manufacture of the Carlton House candelabra is unusually detailed showing the complexity of producing these objects.
The first payments were made to the various artisans and sub-contractors involved in preparing the patterns. Based on the information available in the Ornament Book 1809-1815, it is probable that the initial models and patterns were commissioned as early as 1808. While the design was almost certainly supplied by the Vulliamys, the next most important artistic contribution came from the sculptor James Smith (d.1815) who in April 1809 prepared the plaster model for the three boys at a cost of 26, as well as the model of the ox skulls (1 15s). Smith, a Gold Medallist at the Royal Academy, was a pupil of Locatelli and assistant to John Flaxman and Charles Rossi. He is best known for his large marble monument to Admiral Nelson in the London Guildhall which was unveiled in 1810, the same year the first candelabra were supplied to Carlton House (R.Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, 1953). Smith worked for the Vulliamys on many important projects including the pair of chimneypieces supplied for the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House (and now at Windsor Castle) for which he prepared the models of the satyr uprights (see G.de Bellaigue, 'The Crimson Drawing Room, Carlton House', Furniture History, 1990, pp.17-18, figs.2-3). The candelabras' pattern for the vine-leaf festoons and lotus flower lights (lacking on these examples) was supplied by the carver Hess, and the pattern for the body of the tazza was carved by Abingdon. Many of the specialist metal-workers who prepared the metal patterns were also employed in the actual production of these objects -- casting, filing, chasing, riffling and bronzing. These included Catherwood, who prepared the bronze casting for the boys and ox skulls and Barnett who cast the vine festoons, tazza, etc. Chasing was entrusted to Barker and Lacey, riffling to Couling and the bronzing to Johnston & Co. Workmen called Jacot, Turner and Butler were paid at a day-rate and were probably the only people who could be regarded as directly employed by Vulliamy & Son. In all, it would appear that eighteen craftsmen were involved in the production of the first six pairs of candelabra and paid a total of 1174 17s 2p. The cost of 315 per pair, or 1890 in total, was expensive relative to other objects supplied by the firm and particularly since these objects were not gilded. The seemingly large difference between expenses and amount charged to the Prince takes into account Vulliamy's role in supplying the design and financing and supervising the production.
THE DELIVERY OF THE CANDELABRA
The account states that the Prince personally inspected and approved the model which suggests an unusual degree of personal involvement in the production of these objects. The design of the candelabra was 'made on purpose' for the Prince of Wales and based on the Daybooks, this model was not supplied to any other clients.
There were at least eight pairs supplied to the Prince of Wales: four pairs delivered 23 April 1810; two pairs on 8 June 1811 and two pairs on 30 August 1814 (the Daybook records finish in 1814). The last two pairs were on 'Breschia' marble pedestals with circular plinths and are almost certainly the candelabra which stand on tripod stands and flank the doorways to the Circular Room as shown in the Wild watercolor. Our two examples are numbered '5' and '10' which support that they were included in the first two deliveries.
The entry from Vulliamy's Daybook of 23 April 1810 reads as follows:
Delivered a Pair of very Large Magnificent Bronze Candelabra
for 6 Lights ea. composed of 3 Bronze Boys Standing upon
a Black Marble Pedestal carrying a Tazza upon Their
Shoulders which contains the Nozzles for the Lights
in the Shape of Lotus Flowers the Pedestals are
enriched with 3 Oxes, skulls & 3 festoons of Vine
Leaves after the Antique in very high relief with
Bronze Mouldings & top resting upon a Square Black
Ebony Plinth. The Design for the Candelabra was
made on purpose for His Royal Highness, the Model
was inspected by H R H & approved of, & the patterns
all made on purpose, at a very heavy expense. The
whole of the work is finished in the highest & most
perfect manner @ 300 GsP.Pr................................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ For another pair exactly the same..........................315. ___.___ Rcd 1260. ___.___
The full set of sixteen candelabra was removed to Windsor Castle in 1828 after the demolition of Carlton House. By the time of the 1867 inventory, only fourteen remained in the collection. There is no record of the sale of these two remaining candelabra and it is not known why they left the collection. Their history is unknown until they were purchased by the father of the current owner in 1946-1947.
We would like to thank Roger Smith for his kind assistance with this catalogue entry. Mr. Smith is currently preparing a detailed study of the Vulliamy firm for future publication.