Candlesticks

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)

Manufactured bJohn Hardman & Company Silversmiths

1844-45

13 5/8 inches

Gilt brass

"Pair of Candlesticks. Gilt brass. Circular base with moulded edge; engraved 'Christi Crux Est Mea Lux.' Annulated tubular stem broken by a flat pierced roundel engraved with foliated ornament and enclosing Pugin's arms and motto, En Avant. Circular drip-pan with fleur-de-lis cresting. Plain nozzle with moulded edge."

These candlesticks formed part of a set designed by Pugin in a large and small the Grange in 1844. An entry in the Hardman day book for 1838-44, dated 24 September, 1844 and headed 'Ramsgate. A. W. Pugin, Esqre.', includes the following item: 'A Pair of CSticks Gilt with Arms £14. 10s.' These two must have been the prototypes for the set. A letter from Pugin to John Hardman, in the Hardman Records refers to the candlesticks. Undated but written in 1845, it shows that they had been delivered but were unsatisfactory, and that he had just returned them to Hardman's: 'I have this day sent off the gilt candlesticks to be altered. You will see unfortunately the stems are of different Dimensions all you can do therefore is to lengthen the short part of A (an accompanying sketch shows that the lower part of the stem was intended), and to make the 2 small sockets for candles the same size as the Large ones' . . . One of the stems of the candlesticks shown here is thinner than the other and shows signs of having been braised in. The moulding of the nozzle is also different. Similar candlesticks were shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. See Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851, p. 317 (illus.). The motto on the base was also used by Pugin on a head-band (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) forming part of a set of jewellery designed by Pugin in 1847-8. — Shirley Bury, Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art: The Handley-Read Collection, pp. 36-37

References

Bury, Shirley. "Pugin's Marriage Jewellery." Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook 1 (1970): 85-96.

Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art: The Handley-Read Collection. Ed. Simon Jarvis. London: Royal Academy, 1972. Nos. B112-13.

Last modified 26 July 2007