The Butler Hoard - 1st July 2025

Lot 141

AN IMPORTANT AND IMPOSING PAIR OF BRONZE CANDLESTICKS

Estimate £4,000 - £6,000

+ Buyers Premium

Description

AN IMPORTANT AND IMPOSING PAIR OF BRONZE CANDLESTICKS

MAKER MARKED, NUREMBERG, C.1600

with traces of silvering, each having a waisted and engraved (including guilloche) socket, a flat square knop, atop an entasis fluted columnar stem, on a domed and spreading foot with foliate engraved decoration, punched maker's mark (acorn) to the square knop (2)

31.4cm high

Provenance

Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, Cotehele, Cornwall. A photograph taken c. 1880 shows the candlesticks at Cotehele. They were loaned back to Cotehele, in the summer of 2005, to help create the room setting of 1880.

Literature

Illustrated G. in Wills, 'Candlesticks', p. 67, fig. 54 (Incorrectly dated to mid-18th century); 'Country Life', 10 June, 1905, p.827; Charles Latham, 'In English Homes', (Vol. II, 1907); H. Avary Tipping, 'English Homes' (1927) and R. Butler, 'A Study Collection of Marked Domestic Brass and Other Base Metalware c.1600-c.1900', p. 103, no 223. The maker's acorn mark was apparently used by Georg Grosskopf from 1591, Georg Gscheid from 1597 and Georg Grasser from 1609. See Hermann P. Lockner, 'Die Merkzeichen der Nürnberger Rotschmiede', p. 265.