A Gothic Revival Bronze Hexagonal Hall Lantern, 19th Century

Mallett, London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 14 August 2002.

Even during the high points of Rococo and Neoclassical taste in the eighteenth century, Georgian cognoscenti were well aware of the rich decorative potential of Europe’s medieval ‘Gothic’ style, causing it to have a palpable influence on furniture and interior decoration in the century of Chippendale. Indeed, there are many eighteenth-century precedents for this type of Gothic lantern, as in Mayhew and Ince’s 1762 Universal System of Household Furniture, pl. V. However, it was the Victorians who brought the Gothic style to the forefront, creating a fully-fledged ‘Gothic Revival’ that married modern Victorian splendour with historicist Gothic designs. In an age of increasingly pronounced political and cultural nationalism, the style was deemed more appropriate for England than the Greco-Italian Neoclassicism that had long held sway (though France and Germany also thought of the Gothic as a ‘national style’ of which they were the originators). Fostered through prominent civic projects like the reconstruction and refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster in the Gothic Revival style in the 1840s and 50s, the pointed arches and elaborate tracery of the Gothic soon became one of the defining features of High Victorian taste. Numerous variations on the Gothic Revival lantern have come to auction; for an example of a highly elaborate interpretation of the Gothic style for lighting, see the design for a monumental chandelier by Perry & Co. in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (E.2014-1952).