A pair of French Louis Philippe ormolu table candelabra
Fire-gilt bronze candelabra made from numerous separately cast pieces. Seven-flame design with tapering columns supported by three paw feet on shallow hexagonal bases with three concave facets. Crowned by a central dish from which issue six curved cornucopia shaped branches and a central bouquet, the tip of which can be turned over to form an additional nozzle. Four of the drip pans lost. H ca. 106, D ca. 40 cm.
Paris, attributed to the workshop of Pierre-Philippe Thomire, around 1840.
Pierre Philippe Thomire (1751 - 1843) learnt his trade from the famous Parisian bronze caster and exceptional ciseleur-doreur Pierre Gouthière. Thomire received his first royal commissions in the 1780s but rose to fame under Napoleon, who provided him with ample work. Among many other orders, he completed the famous cradle made for the King of Rome which is today housed in the treasury of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. no. WS XIV 28).
Provenance
Before 1945 in Muskau Castle.
Literature
Cf. a similar candelabrum in the Grand Trianon in Versailles (in Ottomeyer/Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, vol. I, Munich 1986, illus. 5.17.12.). These were ordered from the manufactory for the Queen's working cabinet on 22nd August 1837.