Founded in 1792, the firm Werner & Mieth was the most important Berlin manufacturer of handmade luxury goods in gilded bronze for more than four decades. The new clients for Berlin’s luxury manufactories were mainly French, due to Napoleon I’s occupation of the German state of Prussia. Napoleon’s wife Josephine and other members of the Bonaparte family ordered numerous bronze and glass furnishings from Werner & Mieth.

This chandelier was purchased for the new summer palace of Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s fashionable brother, who was King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813. Werner & Mieth described this chandelier as the "most beautiful crown they can offer." The design may be attributed to the archaeologist and theoretician Hans Christian Genelli (1763–1823) based on its relationship to a drawing in which he dissects the coiled shapes that top classical Ionic columns. Its form is based on a logarithmic spiral with a downward movement. The concept of an upside-down, hanging column is a remarkable one—the curling forms of the chandelier are particularly noticeable from below.

Werner & Mieth (1792–1819), Spiral Chandelier for Jérôme Bonaparte. Cast, chased, and fire-gilded bronze (ormulu) and cut and polished glass, 1810–11. Height: 68 7/8 in. (175 cm); diameter: 39 3/4 in. (101 cm). Gift of Mrs. Henry Goldman, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Owen, Florence Scott Libbey, Angelo del Nero, and Bequest of Edward E. MacCrone, by exchange, 2014.33. On view in Gallery 31.