Chamber candlestick

Arnaud Gautier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seventeenth-century hand or chamber candlesticks were designed to be portable for carrying around the house to light one’s way to the bed chamber. This early late seventeenth-century example is supported on bulbous feet. The straight handle and socket are decorated with incised lines and the round wax pan has a gadrooned edge. Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture, and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum. The collection is particularly strong in domestic silver, much of it provincial such as this chamber candlestick made by Arnaux Gautier in Bordeaux, and includes a number of rare early pieces.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art