Anonymous British ca. 1907
Boyd-Harvey candlestick pair, United Kingdom, 1907

Boyd-Harvey candlestick pair, United Kingdom, 1907
This pair of candlesticks is from the wedding wedding of Georgina A. Boyd Harvey, eldest daughter of the British Boyd Harvey family of Tondu House, South Wales. Both candlesticks are engraved with a legend documenting the two pieces:

‘To / Miss Boyd-Harvey / from M.r & M.s Bradshaw , Tondu. / 15 th Aug. 1907’.

This remarkable social event had such an impact that it was reported in the British press in The Glamorgan Gazette on 16 August 1907, the day after the wedding:

https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3874784/3874792/85/bristol

All kinds of details are included here that give us an insight into the significance of such a high-level wedding: list of guests, references to the church, ceremony, ecclesiastical speech, and especially descriptions of the bride's and bridesmaids' dress, with images of costumes, as well as comments on the decoration in Tondu's house, etc... But these descriptions of guests, and especially the gifts given to the most prominent attendants, again document the origin of these two candlesticks: ‘Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Bradshaw, Tondu: Silver and bronze candlesticks’.

Georgina A. Boyd Harvey married Amaro Duarte y Moreno, son of Don Antonio Duarte and Doña Trinidad Moreno Duarte, a prominent family from Malaga (Spain) involved in military life in the direct service of King Alfonso XIII of Spain.

Georgina's physical image can be seen in the exquisite canvas that the artist John Henry Frederick Bacon (1868-1914) painted to represent the entire Harvey family (The Golden Butterfly - The Harvey Family), together with her parents and siblings, a work of art exhibited in the Royal Academy in London (no. 572) in the same year as the wedding in 1907. The painting was catalogued and auctioned at Christie's, where explicit reference is made to the significance of the marriage: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4516721.

Measurements of each candlestick: 14 x 8.8 cm.