Spanish Gothic Hand-Forged Iron Candelabra

Dimensions · H 19.5" × W 20"
Material · Hand-forged iron in its original blackened forge finish
Era · Circa mid-20th century
Origin · Spanish Colonial Revival tradition, maker unrecorded
Condition · Excellent condition throughout. The forge work is crisp across every joint, and the original finish still follows the hammer texture rather than filling it, wearing through to a warm brown along the high points of the scrolls and drip pans.

The great cathedrals of Spain were furnished in iron long before they were furnished in anything else, their screens and grilles and altar stands worked at the forge by smiths whose names went into the guild rolls and nowhere afterward. That vocabulary of twisted bar and scrolled foot carried out of the churches and into Spanish and Colonial houses, and it has held its place there ever since.

This piece is built entirely in that language. Four rods are splayed and twisted into an open basket beneath each candle cup, a form the smith works hot and by eye, and the cross-member is upset into collars at every junction where the arms meet it. The two arms rise together under the centre light in a pointed arch taken straight from a cathedral window.

The black is the smith's own finish, oil and wax laid onto hot metal so it burned into the surface rather than sitting on top of it, which is why it reads glossy across the raised work and matte down in the hollows. The whole of it stands on three scrolled feet hammered out of flat bar, and at twenty inches across it holds the length of a dining table on its own. Lit, the basket twists throw their shadow up the wall behind, which is the reason a smith cuts them open in the first place.

A companion piece in the same idiom, heavier in section and left raw rather than blackened, is available separately.

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