Provenance
The Rothschild family, Paris
A magnificent French silver table suite by Maison Odiot comprising a set of four 10-light candelabra and a set of four 2-tier cake stands en suite.
Two-tier dessert stands on triform bases on lion claw supports beside escutcheons engraved with the arms of the Rothschild family, applied with three seated female figures below a glass dish from which issues a mask-embellished vase-shaped section on pedestal base supporting a smaller glass dish centred by a kneeling Cupid on an elaborate swag-decorated pedestal.
There were two French branches of the Rothschilds, a Jewish family which had originated in Frankfurt and spread throughout Europe with further branches in Italy, Austria and the United Kingdom where they became ennobled, influential and well-connected bankers with an interest in the arts. James Mayer de Rothschild (1792-1868) a financier who acquired in 1860 the Chateau Lafite vineyard and his nephew, the London-born Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812-1870) who moved to Paris in 1850 to work with his uncle and who acquired in 1853 a vineyard in the Gironde at Pauillac which became Chateau Mouton Rothschild, one of the best-known labels in the world.
The firm of Odiot, originally founded in Paris in 1690, traded in silver and gold vessels but it was only in 1720, in the reign of Louis XV when Jean-Baptiste Gaspard Odiot became a manufacturing silversmith. The wealth and fame of the firm came to the fore in the late 18th century, when, under Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot, the firm became an official purveyor to the court of the Emperor Napoleon I. His son, Charles Nicholas Odiot, continued the tradition of royal goldsmith and was purveyor to King Louis-Philippe. In turn his son, Gustave Odiot later became purveyor to the Imperial Russian court.
