Doe and Hope

Description

The three foot hand painted lighting bracket decorated with highly stylised wing and bull’s-eye motifs, and having four light bulb fitments and cast iron fittings, survives from the middle of the twentieth century.

The bracket remains entirely untouched, un-cleaned and un-restored and is such in as original order, though is not PAT tested but would almost certainly work when re-wired. There are paint losses and flaking as would be expected. It would have been one of several mounted on a fairground attraction.

Many people are fascinated by fairground art and by the gorgeously painted and carved creatures that enchanted us from a young age. The world's finest collection of fairground art was amassed in the 1960s and 1970s by Lord and Lady Bangor when it was generally undervalued and underpriced. When Christie's auctioned their collection at Wookey Hole, Somerset in 1997, the sale attracted huge interest and massive sale results. Collectors flocked not just because of the finery of the collection, but because it is now quite rare to find or be able to purchase fairground art in the open market.

A strikingly vibrant and typically buoyant piece of functional fairground art that would look even more stunning when lit.