Antique Candlesticks
A candlestick holds a candle upright, by socket or by spike, and until oil lamps and electricity took over it was how a room was lit after dark.
Antique Candlesticks
Almost always a pair. 'Pair' appears in 1,536 of 2,168 titles on Sellingantiques, and 'single' in only 41, so two matching sticks is the normal unit and sets of four or five turn up only occasionally. Brass dominates the material: 'brass' in 879 titles, 'brass candlesticks' in 453.
Victorian brass is the largest single group, with Georgian brass behind it. Below that sit seamed sheet-brass stems, petal and swirl bases, push-up and ejector sticks, and low chambersticks with a dish base and handle. A visible minority have been wired and are listed as candlestick table lamps.
The second strand is bronze, ormolu and gilt bronze, largely French, running to figural pairs with cherubs, storks, dolphins, swans, sphinxes and caryatids, and to Empire models. French pieces outnumber English in the titles, 236 to 181, with Dutch, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, Flemish, Japanese, Indian and Syrian work also present.
Smaller branches fill out the rest: oak barley-twist and open-twist pairs, plus mahogany, walnut, lignum vitae and giltwood; church, altar and pricket sticks; and silver and silver plate, including Old Sheffield Plate. Dating is loose across the record, with '19th Century', 'Victorian', 'Georgian' and 'Edwardian' used as often as a year.
Where The Range Splits
Material does most of the sorting. Gilt bronze, ormolu and sterling silver hold the upper part of the range, and the French end of the archive is where nearly all of that metal sits. Plain brass and turned wood fill the lower band, which is also where the bulk of the listings are.
After material comes modelling. A figure carries a pair further than a baluster or a plain column: the higher samples are full of cherubs, animals, knights, caryatids and named styles such as 'Retour d'Egypte', while the lower ones are turned stems and cast bases without incident. Scale works the same way, and 'large' and 'tall' recur through the stronger titles. Oak barley-twist pairs are effectively sold by the inch, from 8" up to 18½".
Date pushes hardest at the far end. Sixteenth and seventeenth century sticks, capstan and trumpet forms, Flanders prickets, sit well above the 19th-century norm, and the highest-reaching piece in the samples is a late 15th-century Mamluk candlestick from Syria. A pair also stands above a single, and a set above a pair.
Antique Candlesticks Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for candlesticks, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The most expensive candlesticks ever sold on Sellingantiques were a large pair of Japanese lacquer figures, Ashinaga and Tenaga, in May 2020.
William Tonks & Sons·Thomas Abbott
The Antique Candlesticks Glossary
- Pair
- Two matching sticks sold together, and the normal unit in this category, present in seven titles in ten.
- Pricket
- A spike that impales the candle instead of a socket to hold it. Named in 70 titles, mostly church and altar sticks.
- Chamberstick
- A low stick on a dish base with a handle, made to be carried up to bed.
- Ejector, push-up or slide ejector
- A slide or lever in the stem that pushes the candle stub out of the socket.
- Barley twist and open twist
- Spiral-turned stem, solid or pierced. 'Twist' appears in 101 titles, 'barley twist' in 80, chiefly on oak.
- Old Sheffield Plate
- Silver fused onto copper, the method that pre-dates electroplate. It appears on several of the plated sticks.
Antique Candlesticks: Frequently Asked Questions
Are candlesticks always sold in pairs?
Nearly. 'Pair' turns up in 1,536 of 2,168 titles, and 'single' in only 41.
Sets of four and five do appear, but occasionally rather than as a normal offering, and they sit mainly in the upper half of the range.
What is a pricket candlestick?
One with a spike rather than a socket. The candle is pushed down onto the point instead of dropped into a cup.
Prickets are named in 70 titles on Sellingantiques and cluster in the church, altar and ecclesiastical group.
Which metal turns up most often?
Brass, by a wide margin. It is named in 879 titles, and 'brass candlesticks' in 453 of them, with Victorian brass the largest single sub-group and Georgian brass behind it.
Bronze follows at 283 titles, then ormolu at 139 and silver at 135. Pewter, oak, mahogany, glass and porcelain make up the rest.
How old are the pieces listed?
The dealer-entered date field runs from 1700 to 1960, and 939 listings carry a clean year. The rest are era labels, with '19th Century' the biggest bucket by some way.
Titles reach back further than the date field does. A 16th-century Dutch Heemskerk stick and a north European capstan socket stick given as c.1540-60 both appear in the samples.
Do French candlesticks feature strongly?
Yes. 'French' appears in 236 titles against 181 for 'English', and the French end of the archive holds nearly all the ormolu and gilt bronze.
Empire is named in 42 titles. Dutch, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, Flemish, Japanese, Indian and Syrian pieces also turn up.
Why are some listed as table lamps?
A visible minority have been converted to electricity, and dealers list those as candlestick table lamps rather than candlesticks.
The form is the same underneath; the socket has simply been given over to a bulb fitting.