1950s Spanish Gilt Wrought-Iron Floor Lamp

1950s Spanish Gilt Wrought-Iron Floor Lamp The plain conical ivory linen shade above a small circular drip-pan or bobeche of flattened form — a deliberate allusion to the ecclesiastical candlestick tradition from which this form directly descends — above a slender plain round-section standard of hand-forged iron, punctuated at the median by a small compressed knop, the whole raised on a tripod base of three arched legs of elegant, attenuated form issuing from a central junction and terminating in outward-curling spade feet, the entire surface finished in a warm distressed gilding of mottled gold and umber tone, the wear wholly consistent with age and entirely enhancing to the object's character. The present lamp belongs to a tradition of Spanish gilt ironwork that flourished with particular intensity in the decades immediately following the Spanish Civil War, when a generation of herreros — blacksmiths and ironworkers — working primarily in Madrid, Seville and the workshops of Catalonia produced floor lamps, candelabra, console tables and mirror frames of l refinement for the grand interiors of the period. The leading name in this tradition is Ferro Arte and the workshop of Juan Ferro, though numerous accomplished regional makers produced work of comparable quality within the same broad aesthetic. The form of the present lamp is a historical — the tripod base with its arched legs and spade feet deriving directly from the medieval Spanish blandón or processional candlestick, via the wrought-iron altar furniture of the Castilian and Andalusian cathedrals, The deliberate retention of the bobeche — functionless in an electric lamp, purely allusive —anchoring the object firmly within its ancestral tradition whilst making no pretence of being anything other than what it is.