Italian antique lighting

Lighting is not a footnote to furniture. A Venetian glass chandelier, a set of gilt wall lights or a sheet-metal lantern is built around a flame, and the construction should show it. Arms must reach a candle in a way that balances the stem. Glass drip pans, sockets and the way a nozzle is ground are part of the object, not accessories to ignore. Gilt-bronze arms wear where they were cleaned, and a set of six that matches too exactly, including the wear, may have been cast as a set much later. Electrification is common and should be visible as a later hole, a replaced candle cup or a wire path that cuts the original metal. These articles cover chandeliers associated with Murano, wall lights and lanterns of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the copies made when those models became decorative stock.

2 articles