This pair of candelabra belonged to the wealthy collector John Jones, who on his death bequeathed them to the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known). He displayed them in the larger drawing room of his house at 95, Piccadilly, where they stood upon two columns between two cabinets. Early Museum catalogues date them to the late eighteenth century and attribute them to the workmanship of the French master bronze-caster and gilder Pierre Gouthière. Certainly the model for them dates to early 1770s Paris, where palace records describe the delivery of two gilded candelabra-vases of similar appearance to the Palais-Bourbon in 1774. The neo-Classical design was popular. Several eighteenth-century examples survive, including a similar pair (inventory no. 72.DF.43) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, attributed to Pierre Gouthière and dated to about 1775. However, the weight, the flat, shiny quality of the gilding of the V&A examples, and the lid cast inseparably with the body of the vases, suggest these are more likely to be mid- to late-nineteenth century imitations. As such, they reflect the taste of the wealthy during this period for furnishings that recalled French eighteenth-century palace interiors. The 1883 Handbook which provides a summary description of the contents of Jones' house noted that the larger drawing room where the candelabra were kept 'was so filled with tables, cabinets and other furniture that [...] there was scarcely space left to move about' (p. 24). While this accumulation of objects implies Jones' enthusiasm for collecting, it also reflected an aesthetic of the time. The 1904 inventory of the contents of a substantial house on Upper Belgrave street which had belonged to Jones' contemporary the Rt Hon. Charles, fourth Earl of Romney, also revealed a building crammed with furniture and ornaments.