This exceptional and highly important pair of George III silver-gilt table lamps was crafted by the celebrated silversmiths Digby Scott & Benjamin Smith, who, along with Paul Storr, were principal makers to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. European fascination with Egyptian motifs, sparked by Napoleon’s 1798 North African campaign, led to the first Egyptian-inspired silver emerging in late-18th-century Paris through makers such as Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot and Martin-Guillaume Biennais.

The Prince Regent, an enthusiastic admirer of this classical style, commissioned his preferred silversmiths, Benjamin Smith and Paul Storr, to create Egyptian-inspired silver unlike anything previously seen. Their efforts culminated in the magnificent dinner service still used by the King today for state banquets. Smith and Storr elevated these Egyptian-influenced designs to new heights of intricacy and sophistication, producing some of the finest silver ever created. As the trend was short-lived in England and largely disappeared by the end of the 1810s, surviving works, such as this pair of table lamps, are extremely rare; most known examples now reside in museum collections.

Commissioned to create only the finest object, Digby Scott and Benjamin Smith modelled these pieces on ancient Roman and Greek oil lamps while infusing them with the exuberance of the period. They feature a superb serpent handle with a coiled, scale-engraved tail and a finely cast head, while the lid is adorned with individually cast acanthus leaves encircled by the makers’ signature grape-and-vine motif.

There are comparable pieces in both the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.