WAS Benson, a Rare Dining, Billiard or Snooker Chandelier with 8 Vaseline Shades

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WAS Benson, a Rare Dining, Billiard or Snooker Chandelier with 8 Vaseline Shades

About the Item

WAS Benson. An exceptional Arts & Crafts brass dining or snooker/billiard table chandelier with a set of eight matching etched Vaseline shades with floral etched decorations. This is the only one of this type known to exist and arguably one of the very best chandeliers Benson ever designed. He was undoubtedly the leading British lighting designer and manufacturer of the Arts and Crafts period. To design and make such a fine brass chandelier of this magnitude in the late 1890s was a brilliant feat of engineering that could have only been achieved by someone so ahead of his time and at the very top of his field. It would have only been made to order. The light is shown with a very rare set of Vaseline shades with stylised floral acid etched decoration, of which there are two more available to make a set of eight, they all retain their original brass galleries with stylised leaf decorations. The listing is for a set of 9, i.e. 1 Benson chandelier and 8 Vaseline shades making 9 items in total. Measurements : The height can be hung 37" from the ceiling as shown in the images or there is another original extension bar with more original brass stays (which you can see in the images). These can make the height from the ceiling 72". The shades can be hung at any height by adjusting the cables below the arms to ones preference. Overall length 92", overall width 36". circa 1895. WAS Benson met Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the 1880s, and would become great friends. He encouraged Benson’s interest in making things, and Benson set up his first workshop not too far from where Burne Jones lived and it is said that Benson designed and made much of the romantic, chivalric armour, crowns and models of ships, that appear in Burne-Jones’ paintings. In a letter to his mother Benson wrote ‘the long and the short of it is, I must make something or be miserable… I think there’s every chance of profit as well as pleasure’. He supplied Morris and Co with lighting for their interior commissions and also sold through the Morris and Co shops. Incidentally Benson became the manager of Morris and Co after Morris died in 1896.

Creator:
William Arthur Benson (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 37 in (93.98 cm)Width: 36 in (91.44 cm)Length: 37 in (93.98 cm)
Sold As:
Set of 9
Style:
Arts and Crafts (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Brass,Uranium Glass,Hand-Crafted
Place of Origin:
United Kingdom
Period:
Late 19th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1895
Condition:
EXCEPTIONAL.
Seller Location:
London, GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU2243310425183