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'Flemish Pendant'

  • Designer / Maker

    Designed and manufactured by W.A.S. Benson (1854–1924)

  • Detail

    Patinated brass

    67.5 x 68.5 cm (max.)

    English (London), circa 1900

  • Literature

    W.A.S. Benson & Co. Ltd, Electric Light Fittings (trade catalogue), undated, E 1592, a ‘Five-Light Flemish Pendant, in Brass, with candle tubes’ (see below)

  • Collection

    Private collection

  • Notes

    Benson advised on how electric light fittings, still a novelty at the end of the nineteenth century, should be used. He wrote, for example: ‘Dining Rooms of say 20 feet by 16 feet, will want a centre light for three lamps, well shaded from the eyes of those at the table. These, while throwing a strong light on the cloth, leave the walls and ceiling in comparative shadow, which may be relieved by bracket lights, two of which are usually required over the sideboard’.

    Benson’s trade catalogues show not only the familiar ‘modern’ silvered, copper and brass lighting fixtures, tables, screens and functional objects, but also a range of more traditional designs, appropriate for grand Edwardian interiors and, indeed, American Colonial Revival interiors,with their tension between tradition and progress. Benson’s trade catalogue Electric Light Fittings (op.cit.) includes ‘Flemish’ and ‘Georgian’ pendants and candlesticks.