Set of Three Stoneware Double Candlesticks

A set of three stoneware double candlesticks by Bernard Rooke, made in his English studio in the 1970s. Each candlestick is hand-built as a pair of flared candle cups rising from a turned, ringed stem on a splayed foot, so the three pieces read as a small architecture when they are grouped together.

The chamotted stoneware is thickly glazed in a pale sage and oatmeal tone that pools in the hollows and breaks over every ridge, leaving the iron-rich clay bare on the raised edges and down the feet. The three are variations on one form rather than identical copies: the glaze runs further on one, the speckling is heavier on another, and the brown of the unglazed clay shifts from honey to chestnut from one piece to the next. That is the point of studio stoneware: the same hand, three results.

Bernard Rooke, born in 1938, studied at Ipswich School of Art and then at Goldsmiths College, where he took up pottery. He set up his first pottery in Forest Hill, south London, in 1960, and in 1967 moved to an old mill in Swilland, Suffolk, which became his main workshop. His sculptural stoneware belongs to the brutalist current of British studio ceramics, and his work is held in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Signed ROOKE, impressed on the foot.

A beautiful set.