CIRCA 1825

This colza hanging lamp or chandelier is conceived in the new robust gothic style popularized by George IV, and employed by Jeffrey Wyattville under the King’s patronage at Windsor Castle. The form and profusion of the decoration has much in common with the designs of Richard Bridgens, who is widely considered as the successor of the great Regency designer George Bullock, and who published his designs in Furniture with Candelabra… in 1838. Another fashionable designer who was working in this new, bolder gothic style was Robert Smirk, whose gothic masterpiece was, perhaps, Lowther Castle, Cumbria. An important gilt-bronze neo-gothic chandelier of different form, but also decorated throughout with crockets, from Lowther and attributed to Smirk was offered Sotheby’s, London, 4 June 2008, lot 125. A closely related, but unattributed, mask-adorned hanging lamp from Callaly Castle, Northumberland, is in the collection at Temple Newsham, Yorkshire (Leeds, Temple Newsham, Country House Lighting, exhib cat., 1992, no. 66).

The colza lamp had been developed by Ami Argand circa 1770 and was patented in England through Argand’s business partner, Matthew Boulton, however, after only two years, reputedly due to Boulton’s negligence, the patent lapsed and so the technology became freely available and was widely adopted by British makers. This kind of gravity fed lamp, running on thick viscose colza oil (which can be distinguished from other modes of lamp by its raised central reservoir), remained popular in Britain until being superseded by more efficient paraffin oil lamps and gas lighting in the mid-19th century.