Important Arts and Crafts Birmingham Guild of Handicraft CR Ashbee Table Lamp.  
 
A highly important and extremely rare arts and crafts table lamp by the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft designed by Arthur Stansfeld Dixon and Charles Robert Ashbee c1905.
 
Illustrated in the Victoria and Albert Museum Birmingham Guild of Handicraft Electric Fittings catalogue as lamp number 83, the lamp is prominent from other examples by being the most costliest. It denotes the lamp having a pierced and chased bronze base and hammered bronze reflector and is likely only very few were made.
 
The design has clear similarities to the work of Charles Robert Ashbee with its cluster of four stems emerging from the base supporting the light shade. The cast bronze stems are formed into stylised plant tendrils rivetted to the silvered and chased bronze pierced base. The Guild adopted design variants over their brief production period with regards to associated fixtures and fittings.
 
The beautiful lamp is a tour de force of Arts and Crafts metalwork, its design encapsulating and quality sublime.
 
It is most interesting to note the Victoria and Albert Museum more commonly seen and simple brass example given by Dixon to Ashbee for his wedding with Janet Forbes. The provenance of this lamp from Madresfield Court questions this claim with its superlative characteristics.
 
Provenance:  From Madresfield Court in Malvern Worcestershire where Dixon and Ashbee worked modernising and remodelling part of the Lygon family home in the early twentieth century.
 
Size: 55cm high x 27cm shade diameter.
 
Marks: Unusually impressed B.G.H. twice to the underside of the base.
 
Condition: in excellent condition in working order ready to install.
 
Date: Circa 1905.