Winning Bid: Empire Bronze Brûle-Parfum

Several weekends ago Boy and I attended an auction at Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York, only several hours north of Manhattan.  The auction was held on a Friday evening at what Stair calls an "Exposition Sale," which is its equivalent of a Christie's House Sale or the Arcade sales that Sotheby's used to have.  These are bread-and-butter, "move-the-merchandise" sales, where Stair unloads what are generally lesser-quality decorative odds and ends that come with estates and that aren't included in the auction house's higher profile weekend sales.

Consequently, it is possible to find hidden gems among the offerings.  We've had good luck at Stair's Exposition sales, and we were particularly successful at this last sale, where we acquired, among other things, what was catalogued as an Empire-style Brûle-Parfum.

Brûle-parfum translates literally as "burnt fragrance," and is the French term for an incense burner, or censer.  We are convinced that ours is a first-period example made in bronze in a classical style popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when burning incense in such pretty vessels enjoyed a vogue among European fashionables.  Although the lot was catalogued as "-style," suggesting that the piece may or may not be "period," we think it was likely made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and is not a later reproduction.  But it was only after we took it apart and cleaned it that we came to this conclusion.

Smoking incense burner in Nepal

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/Yangshu Chao

Incense has been burned since ancient times, originally for spiritual and religious purposes, and later for secular ones.  Thought to have originated in China, the use of incense spread via the Spice Trade routes to the west, arriving in Europe during the days of ancient Rome.  Incense has been used in the Western world ever since, enjoying a resurgence of popularity during my lifetime, first during the Eastern-obsessed Hippie era of the late 1960s--when every Pier One store and head shop sold it--and more recently during the aromatherapy craze.

Russian brûle-parfum, circa 1805

Image courtesy of Carlton Hobbs LLC

In researching this essay I came across examples of other classical bronze brûle-parfums made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from Russia, France, and England.  Some of them are extremely fine, as can be seen in the preceding photograph, and are far grander than our little burner, which as shown in the following photograph stands only 4 3/4 inches tall.   Boy took a picture of it next to a playing card to illustrate its diminutive size.  

Just as the candelabra we bought at an earlier Stair Exposition sale needed cleaning, so did our little incense burner.  And like the candelabra, our censer came apart easily for the task.  Boy washed it with warm water and dishwashing liquid, and used a toothbrush and a wooden skewer to remove the grime and residue that clogged the ventilation holes.

He then dried it, waxed it, and put it back together.  Here's a photo of it sitting on the pier table in our Snuggery, with the lid not quite screwed on straight for the shot:

I think our diminutive brûle-parfum looks marvelous--particularly now that it has been cleaned.  I can't wait to buy some incense and burn it in it.


Stair Galleries
549 Warren Street
Hudson, New York 12534
(518) 751-1000
www.stairgalleries.com


All photos, except where noted, by Boy Fenwick