AN EMPIRE GILT BRONZE AND LEAD CRYSTAL CHANDELIER, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Bernard Steinitz, Paris

The high quality of the glass drops and gilt bronze frame evoke the work of the Paris firm of Chaumont, who produced chandeliers often using crystal prism drops manufactured by the Mont-Cenis glassworks based in Le Creusot and headed by the entrepreneur and politician Benjamin-François Ladouèpe du Fougerais (1766-1821). The two firms collaborated on important Imperial commissions during the first decade of the 19th century, including several chandeliers supplied by Chaumont to Fontainebleau in 1809 (J.-P. Samoyault, Pendules et bronzes d'ameublement entrés sous le Premier Empire, Paris 19898, p.106-7 figs.71-73) and one delivered by Ladouèpe du Fougerais to the Petit Trianon in 1810 (D. Ledoux-Lebard, Versailles, le Petit Trianon. Le mobilier des inventaires de 1807, 1810 et 1839, Paris 1989 p.95, fig.61).

The Mont-Cenis factory was essentially a continuation of the Cristallerie de la Reine, a glassworks founded during the reign of Marie-Antoinette first based at Sevres but transferred in 1787 to the hamlet of Le Creusot in Burgundy, due to the locality's abundance of coal. During the Empire period the factory was renamed the Manufacture des Cristaux du Montcenis de S. M. l'Impératrice et Reine.