A PAIR OF GEORGE III CARVED GILT WOOD GIRANDOLES circa 1760

each with a central cartouche shaped plate within conjoined C-scrolls with foliate and ruffled edges, bordered with conforming mirror plates within similar pierced ruffled C-scroll moldings and flanked by sprays of palm leaves, the cresting similarly formed with ruffled C-scroll cartouches edged with foliate scrolls and surmounted by a basket of flowers, the apron with a rockwork platform with pendant icicles and a foliate spray supporting two scrolled foliate ornamented candle arms with brass foliate candle holders above a foliate scrolled C-scroll cartouche above a foliate pendant.  Re-gilt.

The design of this lot is related to a larger girandole with a height of seven feet now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (See: Desmond Fitzgerald, Georgian Furniture, London, 1969, no. 66). This has a similarly shaped center plate within border glasses, the outer frame with sprays of bulrushes; from the Bernal collection it, and its pair, have been identified with 'two very large Oval Glasses' supplied to the Duke of Portland in 1766 by Thomas Chippendale, although this provenance is purely conjectural (See: Geoffrey Wills, English Looking-Glasses, 1965, p. 100, fig. 90, and page 149).