Antique Pair of Rococo Revival Ormolu Candelabra, circa 1860

A pair of late 19th century French porcelain and ormolu mounted three light candelabra, each with floral and leaf branches above cherubic central column, to floral painted porcelain ...

This is a fine pair of antique Regency Revival twin branch ormolu wall candle lights dating from Circa 1850. The wall lights feature torch urn shaped tops above tapering bodies with...

This is a stunning pair of English antique Neo Classical design Victorian silver plated, five light, four-branch table candelabra, circa 1880 in date, and each bearing the makers mar...

This is a stunning Antique pair of Sevres porcelain and ormolu wall lights, Circa 1870 in date. They feature hand painted oval plaques depicting cherubs in clouds surrounded by flo...

This is a stunning pair of Adam Revival antique gilded ormolu triple branch candle wall lights, dating from the Circa 1840. Each wall light has a tapering body, supporting a spiral ...

This is a stunning monumental pair of antique English Old Sheffield silver on copper, three light, two-branch table candelabra, circa 1790 in date, and bearing the sunburst makers ma...

A Pair of Louis XV Style Rococo Revival Ormolu Three-Light Candelabra. Finely cast in the Rococo Revival style this fine pair of English candelabra...

These wonderful ormolu (gilt bronze) candelabra are fashioned in the Rococo style, which first flourished in France in the Louis XV period (1715-1774). The candelabra are characteris...

Pair of three-flame candelabra Cast bronze, chiselled and mercury gilded France, third quarter of the nineteenth century Height 14.96 in (38 cm) X 12.59 (32 cm) Weight 11.46 lb ...

Pair of antique delicate ormolu and crystal candelabra, circa 1890.     

Bronze, dark-brown patina, unmarked. Measures: Height: 23” Width: 14” The notion of an “American Rococo” seems a contradiction in terms. The very word rococo is as French as Camembert. It connotes a style that reigned along with Louis XV in the aristocratic decadence of the 18th Century. It was garlanded, nonchalant, associated with erotic marshmallow nudes by Francois Boucher and foppish courtiers costumed as shepherds pretending they understood Jean-Jacques Rousseau when all they really wanted was romantic dalliance in the formal gardens of Versailles. In the history of painting it produced but one great artist, Antoine Watteau. By contrast, Americans of the period are remembered as the flinty inheritors of New England Puritans, full of rectitude and having not a moment for furbelow or frippery. Such few painters as were around included hard-nosed realists like John Singleton Copley and Charles Willson Peale. Well, as it turns out, life once again acts according to the principle of paradox. There was an American rococo. It came to us indirectly via England disguised under the name Chippendale. Now for the first time the style receives comprehensive survey in the exhibition “American Rococo, 1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament.” Jointly organized by New York’s Metropolitan Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it opens here Sundaywith a spread of some 170 works of decorative art and a conscientious catalogue with essays by Met and LACMA curators Morrison H. Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman. There are at least two ways of looking at the decorative arts. Connoisseurs appreciate their design and craftsmanship. Those of sociological bent examine objects of material culture for their revelations of history and the temper of the times. Actually neither view is complete without the other. Stylistically the rococo reveals a longing for intimacy in its small scale and an urge to organic nature in its love of stylized vines, tendrils, tiny flowers and seashells. If it were a new manner being promoted by Madison Avenue today it would probably be called “Baroque Lite.” There is an ease about the style that makes it airy, but it has an underlying formality that bespeaks lives of gentrified cultivation rather than beer-bellied sloth. It’s fascinating to examine the flintlock firearms on view and find these weapons of death shaped and decorated with the most exquisite care by wood carvers and metal engravers. All of this is completely consistent with the main currents of 18th-Century European thought. In France, Rousseau sang the virtues of nature and the noble savage like a present-day ecologist. In England, John Locke...

A pair of French Rococo style candelabra after Claudion. Bronze set upon rouge marble base.