(2) Exquisite Bradley & Hubbard Brass Dolphin Andiron Decorations. The dolphins look like the embellished creatures found on highly illustrated maps, near where there be dragons. Matched pair.  

Size: 12 1/2 x 7 x 2 in. 

#4383 . 

In 1852 a businessman named Nathanial Bradley and a smithy named Walter Hubbard formed the Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Company in Meriden, Connecticut. Starting with just six workers (including Hubbard), over the next forty years they became known throughout the United States for producing elegant artistic brass tables, call bells, candlestick holders, clocks, match safes, lamps, architectural grilles, railings, and much more. Overall the company patented 238 designs and mechanical devices. By the 1890s the Bradley & Hubbard name was synonymous with high quality and artistic merit, and in 1895 they expanded their factory space, having grown to over 1,500 workers there, in offices, and at sales rooms in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The United States National Museum (now the Smithsonian Institute) acquired a massive collection of Bradley & Hubbard pieces in the 1920s which are still on display to this day. In 1940 the business was sold to the Charles Parker Company, who closed the Meriden facility and continued to produce their designs for a decade before phasing them out. Their stylish and timeless works can be found in the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Connecticut Historical Society, and many more museums and libraries. One of their greatest surviving collections is a customized interior installation that has been preserved exactly as it was built in the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford, Connecticut. Their pieces are highly sought for their grandeur and their status as 19th Century architectural masterpieces of Americana.