A pair of Austrian silver twelve-light candelabra, Mayerhofer & Klinkosch, Vienna, 1867-69

Orpheus figure finials, the lights in two tiers embossed with anthemions and raised on vine and scroll branches from fluted leaf-bound stems above lion's mask and pendent swag-applied spool-shaped bases, initialled MA below count's coronet and with scratchweights 101 12/16 and 96, loaded, double-headed eagle warrant mark

ASSOCIATED LITERATURE

Walter Neuwirth, Wiener Silber 1781-1866, Vienna, 2002, p. 15

These candelabra can be dated to between 1867, when the Vienna town mark changed to the head of Diana, and 1869, when the firm of Mayerhofer & Klinkosch was dissolved and replaced by that of J.C Klinkosch. The founders of this great silver manufucturing company, Stephan Mayerhofer (1772-1852) and Carl Klinkosch (1797-1860), had passed control to their sons Stephan Mayerhofer and Joseph Carl Klinkosch between 1847 and 1851. The elder Mayerhofer began at the end of the eighteenth century as a maker of `silver-plated wares on iron and steel,' and by 1802 was a maker of 'English plated wares,' presumerably in reference to the Sheffield plate system of sandwiching metal between sheets of silver. The double-headed eagle mark denoting Imperial and Royal privlilege for an 'iron and metal English-plated wares factory' was awarded in 1808. Privileges were variously achieved until in 1825 authorization to work in gold and silver was finally granted. The firm of Mayerhofer and Klinkosch, and later as J.C Klinkosch, eventually rose to become Austria's leading nineteenth century silver and luxury goods manufacturer.