This elegant pair of girandoles reflects the fascination with Antiquity which swept across Europe in the wake of the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. These girandoles, both highly decorative and functional, were modelled after a design for a tripod torchère by Robert and James Adam published in The Works in architecture of Robert and James Adam, Vol.1, no.1, 1773, Plate VIII. Through the Adams’ influence, the form of ancient Roman tripods quickly became a fashionable element in furniture and decorative arts and its popularity among collects ors and furniture makers in the 19th century is evidenced in the present examples.
These girandoles display a wide range of elements borrowed from the classical repertoire: the tripod form, the hoofs, scrolls, female caryatids, paterae, garlands, stylised foliage and acanthus leaves, egg and dart frieze, and palmettes. Originally part of a set of four, these lavish girandoles could therefore only have been designed to form part of a splendid neoclassical interior with matching decoration.
Headfort House, Kells, County Meath, Ireland
Headfort House is a mid-Georgian mansion of restrained neo-Classicism commissioned in the 1760s by Thomas Taylor, the first Earl of Headfort (1724-1795) from the Irish architect George Semple (1700-1782). The interior contains a magnificent suite of six state rooms designed by the renowned Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) and many of drawings survive of his work at.mes llon collects ion, Yale, USA. Even if not all of Adam’s proposals were fully implemented, the interiors are of immense importance as the only significant examples of Adam’s work in Ireland.
The present pair of girandoles were probably designed in the Adam style for the descendants of the first Earl of Headfort in order to complement Adam's interiors and they were photographed in the dining room (C. Hussey, 'Headfort, Co. Meath', Country Life, 28 March 1936, part II, p.327, fig. 3).
