This elegant sterling silver candlestick, stamped with Towle’s hallmark [lion-in-script-T] and the retailer’s mark [script M] for Marcus & Co., represents a rare collaboration between two leaders of American decorative arts. Produced by Towle Silversmiths of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and retailed by Marcus & Co. of New York, the piece reflects a private-label commission in which Marcus engaged Towle to create exclusive designs for its Fifth Avenue clientele. The result combines Towle’s technical mastery with Marcus’s refined aesthetic sensibility, exemplifying the understated luxury favored by America’s upper class in the early twentieth century. With its dual markings—STERLING, 3705, MARCUS & CO., A7TRB—this candlestick stands as both a finely crafted object of use and a document of the collaborative networks that sustained the nation’s decorative arts industries during a period of artistic innovation and cultural refinement.
