Auction for French candelabra which once lit up Kilmory
A pair of ornate 19th-century candelabra which used to adorn the Argyll and Bute Council headquarters building were expected to fetch £30,000 as they went to auction.
Strictly speaking of course, Kilmory Castle was not occupied by the council at the time, but the building was home to the ‘exquisite’ metre-high ormolu and hardstone-mounted candelabra while it was owned by the Campbell-Orde family.
They were commissioned by Ferdinand-Philippe duc d’Orléans, oldest son of King Louis Philippe, in 1839 as part of a surtout de table – an elaborate centrepiece – for the formal dining table in the Palais de Tuileries in Paris.
The candelabra remained in the palace until the revolution in 1848 when a mob broke in and the candelabra (along with many other valuables) were saved and taken to the Louvre for safe keeping. Five years later, they were auctioned off by the Duke’s family and were acquired by Sir James Watts of Abney Hall in Manchester in 1853.
That was the last time their whereabouts were known, and they were considered ‘missing’ as part of a private collection for almost 170 years. It later emerged they passed to Sir James’s grand-daughter, Lady Eleanor, and then to her son, the late Sir John CampbellOrde, whose family has now consigned them to auction.
Kilmory Castle or Kilmory House in Lochgilphead was the home of the CampbellOrdes until 1938. It then had several owners and uses until it was taken over by Argyll and Bute District Council in 1974.
‘The history of these candelabra is quite extraordinary,’ said Works of Art specialist at Woolley & Wallis auctioneers, Mark Yuan-Richards.
‘To be given the chance to market something that was made for a royal palace and had been considered lost for over a century and a half is a privilege that doesn’t come along very often.
‘The Duc d’Orléans himself never knew the fate of his surtout de table, as he tragically died in a carriage accident just three years after they were delivered to the palace. His widow remained there until the 1848 revolution, but France at that time was not a safe place for royalty.’
One of a number of lots consigned from the collection of Sir John Alexander Campbell-Orde, 6th Baronet, the candelabra were up for sale in Salisbury on Wednesday January 8, where they were expected to make around £30,000.
‘It’s very difficult to put an exact value on something this rare as you can’t really put a price on provenance,’ explained Yuan-Richards. ‘The workmanship (by Guillaume Denière) is exquisite and they are expensive objects in their own right; but it is not often that something with royal provenance comes onto the market.’
Other items in the Campbell-Orde collection include a pair of Italian tables thought to have been used in Belem Palace in Portugal (now official residence of the president) and Kilmory, and a George lll clock, also from Kilmory.