WAS Benson. An exceptional Arts and Crafts brass dining or snooker/billiard table chandelier.

WAS Benson. An exceptional Arts and Crafts brass dining or snooker/billiard table chandelier. This is the only one by Benson of this style known to exist in the world and arguably one of the very best chandeliers he ever designed. Benson was the leading British lighting designer and manufacturer of the Arts and Crafts period and as a time served engineer myself, to make such a fine brass light of this magnitude in the late 1890’s was a brilliant feat of engineering that could have only been achieved by someone so ahead of his time and at the very top of his field and it is highly likely this light would have only been made to order. Benson met Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the 1880’s. And they would become great friends. He encouraged Benson’s interest in making things early on. And Benson set up his first workshop not too far from where Burne Jones lived. And it is said that Benson designed and made much of the romantic, chivalric armour, crowns and models of ships, that appear in Burne-Jones’ paintings. In a letter to his mother Benson wrote ‘the long and the short of it is, I must make something or be miserable… I think there’s every chance of profit as well as pleasure’. He supplied Morris and Co with lighting for their interior commissions and also sold through the Morris and Co shops. Incidentally Benson became the manager of Morris and Co after Morris died in 1896. The light is shown with a very rare set of Vaseline shades with stylised floral acid etched decoration, of which there are two more available to make a set of eight if required, they all retain their original brass galleries with stylised leaf decorations . Overall Length 92", Overall Width 36". C1895.