Description:
Wrought iron and brass candlestand or floor standard attributed to Benjamin Gerrish (1686-1750), a gunsmith and brazier in Boston. The candlestand is one of the finest American candlestand examples, and is very similar in detail to two signed examples: One at the MFA Boston, which is inscribed "B* GERRISH" "1736"; and one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art inscribed "GERRISH." The stand, which descended in the Reid or Reed family of Needham, MA, was bought from them in the 1920s, and was on loan to the Concord Musem in the late 1980s. It is supported by three cabriole legs on thin penny feet; below a brass disk and collar through which passes the shaft ascending from a square profile to three twists to a square section through a turned brass collar; up a slightly tapered cylindrical bar to a brass acorn finial. The sliding double-armed bracket has two hooks at the bottom of the spring cage, probably to hang a snuffer and extenguisher; a flat iron crossarm; and two brass candle cups, waisted with molded rims, on round drip pans affixed to the ends of the crossarm with scrolled iron nuts.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+94.010 |
