Brass chandeliers, practical as well as ornamental, evolved in details but remained of the same essential form from the Gothic to Baroque to Georgian periods, through to the mid-nineteenth century when gas-lighting eliminated the use for candles. Few makers are known, but the main centers of manufacture in England were London, Birmingham, Bristol and Cheshire. Large numbers were produced in the Netherlands as well as England, particularly from the seventeenth century onward, in forms difficult to distinguish from their English counterparts. As used in England, they were seen as particularly suitable lighting fixtures for churches and public spaces—including the House of Commons—and many were gifts bearing the name of the donor and the date. For similar chandeliers, see the two-tiered Netherlandish examples in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (obj. nos. 1975.1.1444-5 and 63.208.1), and the three-tiered English example, dated 1732 and formerly in St. Martin’s church, Stamford, Lincolnshire, preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc. no. 133:1 to 27-1897).