Oil lamp
attributed to Wedgwood
Category
Ceramics
Date
c. 1772
Materials
Basaltware
Measurements
350 mm (Height)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 870771.1.1
Summary
Black basaltware, the bowl and tripod stand for one of a pair of ‘Michelangelo’ oil lamps, attributed to Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, c. 1772, unmarked. Part of one of a pair of black basaltware tripod oil lamps, consisting of a fluted bowl, the neck of the bowl supporting six inverted flower-like cups with central nozzles for wicks, the top of the neck with a band of moulded layered acanthus terminating in an astragal (thin convex moulding) of pearl. The bowl is supported on a tripod stand and on the backs of three caryatid figures. The figures are modelled after three of the four figures found on the base of a silt-gilt crucifix by Antonio Gentile da Faenza (1519-1609) in the Treasury of St Peter’s, Rome. The figures were formerly believed to be after the Renaissance artist Michelangelo. The whole mounted on a moulded triangular base.
Provenance
Accepted in part payment of death duties by HM Treasury from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker,4th Earl of Morley (1877-1951) and transferred to NT in 1957.
Makers and roles
attributed to Wedgwood, manufacturer
References
Ferguson 2016: Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016, pp. 134-5. Mallet 1966: J. V. G.Mallet, 'Wedgwood’s early vases: the collection at Saltram House, Devon', Country Life, 9 June 1966, pp.1480-2. Montagu 1954: Jennifer Montagu, ‘A Renaissance Work Copied by Wedgwood’, Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institute, Vol 17, 1954. 380-81.
