Chandeliers and the Law at the Temple of Justice
Part One
There are four identical chandeliers in the Temple of Justice, two each in the courtroom and the Main Reading Room of the Washington State Law Library. These heavy brass lamps each house sixty light bulbs and were created by Tiffany Studios, now Tiffany & Co., in 1921 to 1922, with the building architects Wilder & White approving the design of the chandeliers on December 15, 1921. They are each decorated with six octagonal images of legal symbols which are the focus of this six-part blog series, starting with the flaming sword. We will introduce the remaining symbols in subsequent stories.
Wavy, or flame bladed, swords were largely decorative in European military history, although a two-handed variety is one of the traditional weapons of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. They were often used to represent the flaming sword referred to in the third chapter of Genesis, when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden:
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22–24).
Some artists such as the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix chose to represent the sword with actual flames. While other artists, including the designer of the chandeliers, represent the flames with a wave-bladed metal sword. A good example is included in the Cambridge University, Trinity Hall Library’s display of the Faces of Eve, taken from the frontispiece of a 1695 edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
This biblical imagery of the flaming sword has been incorporated into other contexts in the history of western Europe and North America. For example, the Freemasons incorporated the imagery into their official post of Tiler, an officer who controls access to a Lodge, prohibiting entry to nonmembers who have not been properly invited. Albert G. Mackey, a South Carolina doctor and scholar of freemasonry, wrote in his Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences (1874) that “up to a comparatively recent period, the Tiler’s sword was wavy in shape, and so made in allusion to the ‘flaming sword which was placed at the east of the garden of Eden, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.’ It was, of course, without a scabbard, because the Tiler’s sword should be ever drawn and ready for the defence of his post” (p. 780).
Unfortunately, the artistic intent and identity of the designer at Tiffany Studios., including any possible freemason connection, is absent from the purchase records for the chandeliers, which are in the possession of the Washington State Archives. Nonetheless, at its core, the flaming sword represents the just use of force to banish lawlessness. (RM)
