Candlestick

The candlestick is a part of a ten-part toilet set containing also two pairs of caskets of various sizes, one big casket, two seashell-shaped snuffboxes and a brush fitting (Wil.510–Wil.519). Silvers from the set were made by a Berlin goldsmith active in the first half of the 18th century, who signed his works as Röhner. The unique artistic value of this set lies in the decoration of casket lids, jewel box sides and candlestick bases and stems made of surfaces fully covered with enamel and adorned with caps of pure gold, called “Saxony enamel”. Such luxurious products were ordered and distributed by Pierre Fromery – an armourer and trader in haberdashery products, who arrived in Berlin from Paris in 1685. Fromery and his son Alexander (also trading in medals) presumably commissioned Berlin experts to make plates with this unique decoration. The set is one of the unique works adorning the richest treasuries of rulers in Munich, Vienna and Denmark and museum collections in Hamburg or Boston.

A stem expanding upwards and crowned with a bell-shaped bobèche “grows” out of the base similar to a rectangle, rounded on narrower sides and with four semi-circular grooves on broader sides. Except for the base frill and tips of gilded silver, the entire candlestick is covered with white enamel with a painting decoration. Caps with the bust of a man in a helmet and the image of a sitting female figure with a shield or mirror with a white surface rested on the knees, which was used in other elements of the set, were symmetrically put upon the stem. In other parts, intricately chiselled golden figures, small heads,
garlands and animals were put upon the background of the enamel.

The candlestick, along with the entire set (called the Dressing Table in the 19th century), was shown to the Warsaw audience during An Exhibition of Antique and Art Objects in the palace of Count August Potocki and his wife at Krakowskie Przedmieście 32 (today the Museum of the University of Warsaw) in 1856. The set is described in the catalogue of this exhibition under item 513.

Joanna Paprocka-Gajek