Pair of Vintage Toleware Candlesticks in Black with Hand Painted Roses

A pair of black metal candlesticks, each stem a single ribbon of iron curled into a generous S and painted by hand with dusky pink roses, white daisies with yolk yellow centres, sprigs of lilac and soft green leaves. Even the candle cups have a tiny daisy and a scalloped lilac trim, which tells you whoever painted these was thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Toleware is the old name for painted metal homeware. It began in eighteenth century Britain, most famously in the japanning workshops of Pontypool and Usk, and came back into fashion as a much loved craft in the 1970s and 1980s, when tole painting classes filled village halls. We think these belong to that later revival: the roses are built up in layered, confident strokes in the folk tradition that also brightened canal boats and fairground wagons.

Each candlestick stands 16cm tall on a domed base 10cm across, with a wide drip tray beneath a cup that takes a standard dinner candle. They have been well used and well loved, and the paint shows it, with chips around the rims of the bases and drip trays and a few rubs along the scrolls where bare metal peeks through. To our eyes that wear is a large part of their charm, giving them the soft, lived in look of candlesticks that have been lit at many a supper, but do look closely at the photographs.

Black is a gift in a painted scheme because it lets every colour around it sing. Pop them on a kitchen dresser with sage or duck egg candles, as we have here, or on a mantelpiece among blue and white china and a small floral oil painting. Come December they suit a cottage table with deep red tapers and a sprig of holly, and they sit happily beside painted trays and other folk art pieces for a cheerful, collected look.

Sold as a pair.