George III Cut Glass Six Light Chandelier
ENGLAND, circa 1790
Height: 51 inches (130cm)
Diameter: 32 inches (82cm)
Provenance:
Possibly supplied to Woodgate Family at Somerhill, Tonbridge, Kent
Possibly James Alexander Esq.
Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, 1849
Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid moved the chandelier from Somerhill to The Old Laundry in 1981
By descent
Bibliography:
Cf Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Vol I, p.336, fig. 23 for a chandelier bearing similar spires now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, and p. 337, fig. 24 for a very similar glass urn in the stem.
Somerhill
The Jacobean mansion of Somerhill was built circa 1611-13 by Frances, daughter and heiress of Queen Elizabeth’s minister Sir Francis Walsingham, and her third husband, Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde. It was built on part of the Manor of Southfirth that had been presented to Frances by Queen Elizabeth I. There is a draft plan preserved in the Soane Museum with a note suggesting the architect was John Thorpe. The estate subsequently passed to the Woodgate family and was later acquired by James Alexander Esq., in 1816, who engaged Sir Jeffery Wyattville to remodel the interior. In 1849 Somerhill was bought by Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid from whom it passed by descent until the early 1980′s when the family moved out and there was a sale of much of the contents organized by Sotheby’s. Somerhill has subsequently become a school.
Small Drawing Room at Somerhill, showing the chandelier in situ
The present chandelier hung in the small Drawing Room at Somerhill, from the time when the Goldsmid family first acquired the house, in 1849, until 1981. It may be that the chandelier was supplied to the house at the time it was made, circa 1790, but there is no documentary evidence to prove that.