Dear Helaine and Joe: Can you tell me what I own and if it’s worth anything? There are glass prisms and brass figures, like American Indians and pilgrims. My mother insisted that I take it when she gave me a piano.
— SB
Dear SB:
I would like to thank your mother for giving you Girandole, which was probably made about 10 years before the Civil War.
The word Girandole means fireworks and candlesticks in Italian. The term sometimes refers to a convex mirror with two to four candle arms (sometimes a frame with an eagle on top), but rarely refers to a basket with flowers or a dragon / dolphin. There is also.
The overall idea was that the mirror would reflect the candlelight into a dark room, making things a little brighter.
Another type of Girandole included a central sconces with two sconces on the sides. All three were usually adorned with flower ropes with prisms hanging from the ends of the candle cups. The central parts of both the sconces and the two sconces were cast in brass or bronze (often gold-plated or sometimes silver-plated) and were figurative in shape.
There were flowers and jumping stag beetles, but there were also literary themes such as Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom and Eva, Lip Van Winkle, and most commonly Paul and Virginie. name.
The Girandole candlestick in today’s question is based on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans: The Story of 1757.
Novels and candlesticks take us to western New York during the French and Indian War. The candlestick shows the character of the Mohican chief Chingachgook sitting on a log with Natti Bumpo, also known as Hawkeye. Behind it stands Ankasu, the son of Chingachgook and the last Mohican.
The two…
Capt. Joe Berry, right, and longtime mate William K. “Billy” Brown, show off a wahoo in this 1955 photo from the Aycock Brown Papers. Photo: Courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, State Archives of North Carolina 
