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Candlestick
Unknown - Enlarge image
Candlestick
- Place of origin:
Sheffield, England (made)
- Date:
ca. 1760 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Sheffield plate
- Credit Line:
Lt. Col. G. B. Croft-Lyons Bequest
- Museum number:
M.656-1926
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This candlestick is made of Sheffield plate – copper coated with silver by fusion. This technique was discovered in 1742 by a Sheffield cutler, Thomas Boulsover (1706–88), creating a product that looks like solid silver at less than half the cost.
The candlestick is also the product of innovations in the technique of die-stamping – the impressing of relief decoration in thin sheet silver or Sheffield plate. From the 1760s advances in press design enabled the use of die-stamping for larger items such as candlesticks, using a variety of motifs in any number of combinations. To make candlesticks, the stamped sheets were trimmed, soldered together and filled with resin, with the bases loaded to give stability.
The candlestick is decorated in an ornate Rococo Revival style – one of the most significant, and the earliest, of 19th-century stylistic revivals. Although criticised as excessive and lacking in taste, Rococo was becoming the dominant style for commercial manufacturers by the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
