Louis XV-style Gilded Wrought-iron And Crystal Pendants Cage Chandelier

A "cage" or "hot-air balloon" chandelier with a gilded wrought-iron structure, whose openwork frame draws eight curved uprights joined at the top by a crown and at the bottom by a worked ring. The eight arms of light, arranged in a crown, each terminate in a corolla-shaped cut-out and gadrooned sheet metal bobèche, receiving a white wax faux candle.

The ornamentation is composed entirely of cut-crystal pendants: large diamond-tipped daggers with scalloped edges in peripheral drops, spindle-shaped pendants with cut sides, and flowered rosettes formed by a central gadrooned knob around which faceted drop petals articulate. These florets, attached with brass wire, run along the jambs and mark the junctions of the frame. At the center of the shaft, a blown crystal ball, suspended from a rosette, punctuates the vertical axis. A second ball, at the bottom, is missing.

The set is based on a formal repertoire inherited from 18th-century chandeliers, taken up and widely disseminated by the Parisian workshops of the second 19th century.

France, late 19th century.