AN IMPORTANT PAIR OF REGENCY CANDLESTICKS BY CROOK & JONES
REF: FA1448
A rare pair of patinated and gilt bronze candlesticks, depicting Europe and America, each allegorical figure holding a gilt-bronze scrolling arm fitted with a cut-glass candle nozzle hung with icicles. The rear of each figure engraved Crook & Jones 5 Ludgate Hill London.
- Height 36.5 cm / 14 1⁄2"
- Width 15.5 cm / 6 "
- Year 1830
- Country England
- Signed Crook & Jones 5 Ludgate Hill London
- Provenance Private collection USA Only one set of the four continents is know to exist formally with Jeremy's and latterly in an anonymous Sotheby's sale, these however were not singed by the maker.
- Literature The iconography of the four continents Was codified in the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa in the early 17th century, and remained relatively unchanged by the early 19th century. They were a common late 18th century subject and appeared on the courtyard facade of the Strand wing of Somerset House and in Coade Stone on Soane's Bank of England. However, their popularity in the 18th century was probably as a consequence of the colonial power of Europe, and particularily England, rather than the earlier implied function of stressing the world wide spead of Christendom, Consequently, Europe appears as Queen of the World: crowned and carrying a septre. She wears classicising clothes, which align her with Asia, characterised by the jewels in her hair. Africa and America are both bare breasted - Africa with her coral necklace and America with a feather headress and tobacco leaf skirt. These attributes similarly appear on an 17th century English blackamoor figure, illustrated E.H. Pinto, Treen and other Wooden Bygones, 1968, fig 436 and a 19th century, possibly Italian, torchere, converted for uses as a paraffin lamp at Temple Newsam (illustrated Christopher Gilbert, Country House Lighting, 1992, p.146, fig. 122).
