Lampstand

The brass lamp stand, made up of three pieces, has a saucer and pricket supported by a baluster-turned shaft and tripod base. The feet of the stand—in the shape of lions’ paws—are capped at the knee by the flared base of the shaft terminating in three downturned knobs. The rising shaft flares at its center. Three pairs of concentric circles are inscribed the shaft at its base, middle, and top. The middle piece (approximately 1.6 cm high) connects the tripod base to the saucer. It flares at the bottom and rises to a small disc. Unlike the upper and lower pieces, which have inscribed bands, the middle piece is decorated with a raised band. The third piece, the saucer and pricket, is joined to the middle piece by a screw. This section is inscribed with three pairs of concentric circles (at the base, under the lip of the saucer, and on the pricket) and a single, deeper circle on the upper edge of the lip of the saucer. The tripod base and flared shaft are similar to other eastern Mediterranean examples from the fifth to seventh centuries CE (1). M. Ross attributes a similar stand in the Dumbarton Oaks collection to Syria, based on a group of stands sharing similar bases and swelled shafts (2). Chronological attribution of the group stems from inscriptions on stands from the Hama excavations (3). This stand is made to support a lamp on its pricket. Stands varied in height from 30 cm to over a meter. The shortest were intended for tables or wall niches, and the tallest were placed on the floor. The difference in decoration, patina, and metal alloy of the middle piece compared to the other two parts of this stand suggests that the middle piece is a repair, thus precluding any estimation of the original height of the stand. NOTES: 1. For similar examples of footed tripod bases with ring-inscribed stands, see M. C. Ross, Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection 1: Metalwork, Ceramics, Glass, Glyptics, Painting (Washington, DC, 1962) nos. 34 and 39, pls. 27-28; E. D. Maguire, H. P. Maguire, and M. J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House, exh. cat., Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, 1989) 71, no. 17; J. C. Waldbaum, Metalwork from Sardis: The Finds through 1974, Archaeological Exploration of Sardis Monograph 8 (Cambridge, MA, 1983) 104, no. 615, pl. 40; A. Gonosová and C. Kondoleon, Art of Late Rome and Byzantium in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, 1994) 258-59, no. 88; and M. Xanthopoulou, Les lampes en bronze à l’époque paléochrétienne, Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité tardive 16 (Turnhout, 2010) 242-52, nos. CD 6.001-6.022 and 6.024-6.043. 2. M. C. Ross, Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection 2: Jewelry, Enamels, and Art of the Migration Period (Washington, DC, 1965) 38. 3. Gonosova and Kondoleon 1994 (supra 1) 259. Anne Druckenbrod Gossen