Girandoles were integral accessories for the properly furnished mid-nineteenth-century American parlor.  Manufactured in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, they came in a variety of finishes and bases. The girandoles’ decorative figures included historical and fictional personages, architecture, flowers, and even a menagerie of animals. The Bayou Bend girandole, the centerpiece of a three-piece set, indicates the variation available. This example from Cornelius & Co. represents Cora Munro, a character from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, and is executed in the then unusual, innovative surface treatment of electroplated silver.

Technical notes: The figures are hollow-cast; the candle sockets and prism brackets are separate elements. The metal consists of silver electroplated on brass.

Related examples: Tracy et al. 1970, no. III; Bacot 1987, pp. 174–76; Fennimore 1996, pp. 226–27, no. 137.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.