Description:
Wrought iron smoking stand with two candle sockets on a scrolled upright arm over a large, round drip pan; a shaft with a decorative twist at mid-point; and a tripod base ending in diamond-shaped feet, which was made by Cornelius Mahoney Kelley (1874-1954) and owned by the Ambercrombie family of Deerfield. Born in County Cork, Ireland, Kelley moved to the U.S. in 1889 and Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1891 where he initially worked for a carriagemaker. By 1899, Kelley was renting space in Deerfield where he was the village blacksmith making horse shoes and repairing farm implements. Beginning around 1900, Kelley gradually shifted his work from blacksmithing to fashioning reproduction hardware, fireplace equipment, and iron lamps and candelabra inspired by colonial designs, and became an active member of the Deerfield Arts and Crafts Society and later Society of Deerfield Industries. The Arts and Crafts movement, of which this is a local example, was considered finished in the U.S. by 1916. Kelley, who was more of a traditional blacksmith than artist, was never considered a "cutting edge" in the movement, but was a practical man who recognized the changes in society's needs and followed the artistic trends of the day in wrought iron work to become an American success story. Ellen Snyder Grenier's article "Cornelius Kelley of Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Impact of Change on a Rural Blacksmith," in "The Substance of Style: Perspectives on the American Arts and Crafts Movement," edited by Bert Denker (Winterthur, DE: The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1996, pp. 263-279), illustrates the piece and refers to it as a candlestand/smoking stand, c. 1930 and writes: "The combination of a candle/smoking stand is another example of Kelley's innovation. There are allusions to an American colonial candlestand: the base, the upright vertical, an iron cup similar in form to those seen on horizontal yokes with two cups (although the cup is iron, not brass, and its drip dish is smaller than colonial prototypes). But the holder for matches and an ash tray are twentieth-century elements reflecting the vogue that came at the turn of the century. Somehow, it still manages to look old."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+86.066 |
