1922 Oscar Bach Spanish Tudor Style Torchiere- a Pair Floor Lamps

Description

Oscar B. Bach signed torchère pair in the Henry Tudor style with Cymru/Wales dragon incorporated into the arabesque design of … more Oscar B. Bach signed torchère pair in the Henry Tudor style with Cymru/Wales dragon incorporated into the arabesque design of the lanterns very Gothic.

The finials are in the image of a Tudor galleon. The tops hinge open for access to the light bulbs. The lanterns are lined with amber toned mica inserts.

The sugar barley twist poles surmount triform bases supported by paw feet.

The lights turn on by pull-chain.

The floor lamps were a 1922 release design and hand-wrought in lead and bronze in Oscar Bach's New York studio.

See the article included here from the November 1922 edition of Arts & Decoration. One of the lamps is pictured in the upper right corner of page one of the feature. The article reads:

"Sonatas in Silver and Ballads in Bronze: A Modern Disciple of the Incomparable Cellini Brings Back the Craftsmanship of the Metal-Worker

By PERRITON MAXWELL

Between a murder and a masterpiece, Benvenuto Cellini was wont to spur his imagination by a humble study of the best works of his contemporaries in the craft of which his own products are today esteemed the soul and symbol of perfection. He could always learn a new and useful fact from the least of those who toiled beside him, and he kept his mind wide open to new impressions. If he went swaggering through life, a darkly picturesque figure in a vividly picturesque period, leaving behind him a record for incredible homicide and the stigma of wanton villainy, he has, nonetheless, imprinted the art of the metal-worker with an unexcellable standard. He held the human body to be but a poor thing if it fell too readily under the vicious trust of his poniard, but he made sincere obeisance to genius, which he was keen to recognize. Cellini has been dust for centuries but his example in craftsmanship, if not in manslaughter, is still an inspiration. And one of his most ardent disciples is the man whose handiwork is reproduced in these pages - Oscar B. Bach.

To be an artist in silver, bronze and iron requires something more than an ability to design. Much of these stubborn materials themselves must enter into the makeup of the artisan who would convert a bar of lifeless metal into a grille of charming curves and intricate pattern, or a sheet of bronze or silver into shapes of vivid beauty. Of course, with modern processes and perfected tools, the marvels of the hour do not arouse our wonder to the extent that do those Gothic master pieces of metal and those ramps and grilles of the Renaissance wrought with the bare hands and a few rude implements. For the most part the modern master metal-worker does little more than conceive the design which a corps of assistants execute. But this is not the method of Oscar Bach. While he has a shop ful of workers it is a rare day when he does not wield a hammer or operate the forge to secure some special and delicate result.

Born in Berlin, Bach studied under two professors of art, but when he was no more than eight years old he received his first instruction in designing from an uncle who had some repute as a portrait painter and etcher. It was the latter who noticed the lad's interest in metal work and who first made him acquainted with Cellini and that other great artist-artisan Peter Vischer of Cologne. When he was fourteen Bach became a pupil of Professor Versani, a Berlin metal-worker, and began his studies of the old masters of design. The turning point of his career came when he went to Venice in 1908 and there fell under the inspiring influence of Francesco Naager.

Today, after ten years' residence in this country, Bach has made a distinguished place for himself among those who are creating indubitable works of art from insensate metals. To my question: "Which of the metals do you like best to work in?" he replied: "For repoussé, silver. gold and bronze; for the solid and constructive, iron, of course; for the decorative and everlasting, lead." From which it is apparent none of the fusible or malleable substances yielded by Mother Earth escape his artistic sympathies or is foreign to his skill of hand.

To visit the Bach studios is an education and an eye-opener. Tucked away in a dingy loft building on the far West side of Manhattan, this creator of beautiful things in stub born materials produces, day by day, iron grilles with the chaste loveliness of a Japanese sketch of cherry blossoms, wrought iron hand rails and newels of utmost intricacy and refinement, bronze doors of Titanic strength and grace - a thousand and one objects whose whole purpose is to glorify the home and lend charm to existence.

Greater than ever before is the demand of the architect for iron as the most desirable note in the embellishment of his façades, and the metal-worker, who himself may be silversmith or architect, supplies him with products of supreme beauty. To the finest styles of the past an originator of such high skill and imagination as Oscar Bach blends and bends to modern uses all that is desirable in the enhancement of architecture. With a masterful manipulation of material as unpliable as iron, here is an artist who creates a cathedral door in an open design whose beauty can only be designated as thrilling. And from these more as colossal achievements he turns in a twinkling to the making of a candelabra whose every leaf and spiral is hammered hot on the anvil and assembled into delicate completion ready for Beauty's boudoir.

Perhaps among the most fascinating of his recent works are a number of window grilles which, placed deep within the masonry, gleam forth as grotesques and decorative fantasies. His ornamental rendition of birds, done in a purely decorative vein, makes one forget the utilitarian purpose for which they were made - the protection of door or window.

Of all his more important works the artist considers his grille representing the history of Ireland and the lives of the Irish saints as his finest achievement on a large scale. But none the less important as representing his versatility is the lead work and interior iron and iron repoussée in screens, tables, torcheres, etc., executed for the residence of James A. Farrell, Esq. And here it may be noted that no other worker in his own field is so widely represented in the great homes of America as is Mr. Bach. To name any influential personage who boasts a modern house of unusual proportions and beauty, is to find some part of the structure the brain child of Bach.

"What," said I, when quizzing this German-born genius who looks like an Italian and talks like a native New Yorker, "What is your greatest ambition in the line of your work?"

Almost as if he had anticipated the question and rehearsed the answer he replied: "To create and to give to those who can appreciate it, real metal work - the metal work of the Twentieth Century; not carefully measured copies of the ancient works offered to patrons without discriminating between the good and the bad. I believe in basing invention on the inspiration afforded by the old masters of our craft, but too often present day metal-workers are content to imitate the glorious old designs which every one knows, rather than to create genuinely new ideas. Originality of treatment and integrity of method and materials - I ask no higher praise than to be known as the craftsman who employs these in all his output."

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