Lot 335

WWI French Trench Art Shell Lamp Pair - Knights with Cross of Lorraine

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Lot 335
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WWI French Trench Art Shell Lamp Pair - Knights with Cross of Lorraine
WWI French Trench Art Shell Lamp Pair - Knights with Cross of Lorraine
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WWI French Trench Art Shell Lamp Pair - Knights with Cross of Lorraine

Estimate: $500 - $750

Starting Bid: $250

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT (In Progress)
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Western Europe, France, Third Republic, ca. 1914–1918 CE. A knight rises from the brass in low relief, mailed and helmed, his sword lifted and his shield charged with the double-barred Cross of Lorraine, the whole figure conjured by hammer and punch from a spent artillery round. Each lamp is built from a fired shell. The cylindrical cartridge case forms the brass body, banded at the shoulder by a collar of copper drawn from the driving band, and crowned by the reseated projectile, an ogival nose of iron and nickel-copper alloy tapering to a fitting of turned wood and brass. The case wall is worked in repousse and chasing, the figure raised from within and its edges sharpened from without, then set against a ground of dense punched stippling that throws the burnished armor forward into the light. A cast brass tray on bracketed feet steadies each column from below. The soldier in the metal is no idle ornament. He is the crusader-ancestor of Lorraine itself, for the double cross on his shield descends from Godefroy de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, who carried it to Jerusalem in 1099 and left it to his heirs as heraldic arms, and which by the fifteenth century had passed to the Dukes of Anjou and Lorraine to take the name it still keeps. Yet the cross speaks most urgently to its own century. Between 1871 and 1918 the German Empire held Alsace and the Moselle reach of Lorraine, torn from France after the Franco-Prussian War, and across those four decades the Croix de Lorraine became the rallying sign of a nation's resolve to reclaim its lost provinces. Joan of Arc, a daughter of that same contested ground, had long been gathered into its symbolism, her banner remembered as bearing it. To beat this emblem into a fired shell, the very instrument of the war, was to turn ordnance into oath. Such objects belong to the broad and tender genre the French named artisanat de tranchee, trench art, made by soldiers at rest, by convalescents and prisoners, and by civilian metalworkers from the spent brass that carpeted the front. The obus lamp ranked among its most ambitious forms, a weapon disarmed and brought home to the hearth as souvenir, memorial, and quiet defiance. The two survive as near-twin mates, likely the work of a single hand, conceived to stand together as a garniture. Size: Both 4" W x 11.4" H x 4" D (10.2 cm W x 29.0 cm H x 10.2 cm D).

Provenance: ex-private collection, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, USA, collected from 2010 to 2015

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Item # 199403

  • Condition: Fair. Neither functions as a lamp with wires of both cut on interior. Each part of lamp is easily detached. Some indentations, abrasions and weathering to surfaces. Nice remaining detail with rich patina throughout.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000