Andirons composed of iron and brass elements evince a collaboration between the blacksmith and the brazier. From a practical consideration, their wrought-iron feet, legs, and upright better withstood the fire’s intensity and did not require polishing. To the practicality of the iron, the brass elements added their stylishness, as Jacob Wilkins’s 1765 advertisement for an “assortment of iron andirons with brass heads’' implies. The two-dimensional baluster shape of the Bayou Bend andirons must have found its inspiration in the brass examples popular at the time as well as earlier (see B.61.108.1, .2). The Conklin-Whittingham andirons are the only marked examples of this type.

Technical notes: The brass cap and urn are separate elements, the latter cast in halves and seamed.

Related examples: Antiques 40 (October 1941), p. 192; Antiques 126 (August 1984), p. 329; Antiques 140 (September 1991), p. 264: Fennimore 1996, p. 145, nos. 65a, b; Skinner, Bolton, sale 1755, January 12, 1997, lot 112.

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.