Pair of candlesticks

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These chamber candlesticks were designed to be suspended from a hook, hung over a standign screen, or placed on a table. Both are formed of two lacquer dishes—one of black and gold, the other of red and gold—elaborately mounted with gilt bronze. The cup-shaped receptacles on the verticle handles originally contained candle extinguishers. The neoclassical design, combining pendent husks, rosettes, overlapping piasters, and draped festoons of berried laurel leaves, is closely related to the style of Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734–1791), a Parisian architect and ornamental artist who executed numerous sets of designs for furniture, metalwork, vases, trophies, and cartouches. [Bill Rieder, 1984]

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