LAQUERED BRASS HEXAGONAL SIX-LIGHT GOTHIC REVIVAL CHANDELIER
English or American, 1840-1860
H: 37½,” Diameter: 23″
Condition: Excellent, All original, old repair to one candle arm. Re-lacquered.
The Gothic style was popular in England throughout the Regency period as evidenced by the multiple illustrations of Gothic designs for furniture published by George Smith in 1808 and 1828. A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852) was also very influential, publishing designs in the Gothic taste in Ackermann’s Repository, 1825-1827, and in his Gothic Furniture in the Style of the Fifteenth Century (London, 1835), where twenty-five pages of his own designs are published. Gothic was an important part of the Regency aesthetic. In the U.S., it began with an elite in the 1830’s and became “popular” after 1840 and for at least a decade as evidenced by the work of architect and designer Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892). The Civil War (1861-1865), brought the interest in the Gothic taste to a close.
The basic design of this fixture is inspired by one, probably designed by Pugin, c. 1828, for the Beaufette Room at Windsor Castle, which suggests an English origin, as much of the best brass lighting in the U.S was imported from the many brass lighting manufacturers of Birmingham. Yet, American lighting manufacturers such as Cornelius & Son in Philadelphia or Henry Hooper and William F. Shaw in Boston are also possible makers of this pendant fixture.
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