Pair, Portuguese Faience Bird-Form Candlesticks, After the Museum Antiquity

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A spirited pair of hand-painted faience candlesticks from Portugal, produced as an authorized reproduction of an earlier historic ceramic type. … Read more A spirited pair of hand-painted faience candlesticks from Portugal, produced as an authorized reproduction of an earlier historic ceramic type. Each takes the form of a plump, stylized bird perched on an oval base, its back rising into a stacked tapering candle socket banded in yellow, blue, and manganese. The bodies are painted in feather-scale dashes, the eyes simple radiating suns, and the palette the traditional Iberian triad of ochre, green, and cobalt against a tin-glazed white ground. The glaze surface shows fine crackle and warm tone typical of Portuguese folk production, with the hand-incised underside markings reading Made in Portugal — Authorized Copy, linking these directly to sanctioned workshop reinterpretations of documented originals.

The prototypes for this form date to the 18th and early 19th century, when zoomorphic lighting devices appeared in faience workshops from Coimbra to Estremoz, and in related Hispano-Portuguese vernacular ceramics. Period examples were often shaped as doves, hens, or fantail birds, used both domestically and liturgically, sometimes associated with nuptial symbolism or household blessing. They featured similarly naive modeling, dotted plumage, and stepped candle sockets, though earlier examples typically show more granular tin-glaze and deeper cobalt reserves. Many museums and regional Portuguese collections hold single birds or pairs of related forms, admired for their folk charm and continuity of design through later revival production — of which this pair participates as an intentional continuation rather than a modern invention.

Measures: 5.625" h x 3.625" d x 2.75" w See less