With their curvaceous torsos, asymmetrical compositions, well-sculpted curves and fine casting, these candlesticks, part of a larger set of eight, are excellent examples of the artistic heights reached by the silversmith in eighteenth-century England.

Until the 1730s, English candlesticks tended to mimic the simple column shapes of architectural forms. By the 1740s, however, silversmiths began to expand their interests with the fresh influence of the French Rococo. Candlesticks became more highly ornamented, theatrical and, in the spirit of some art of the period, more bacchanalian. Set within a great eighteenth-century English town or country house, candlesticks such as these helped create an ambience of wit and merriment.