An exceptionally rare wrought iron Sunflower staircase or balcony section of railing. This section of railing was possibly part of the railings that encircled the Japanese Pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia and the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

Designed by Thomas Jeckyll, born 1827 - died 1881, and manufactured by Barnard Bishop and Barnard. 

Thomas Jeckyll trained as an architect and was active, both as an architect and designer, in London and Norfolk. In the 1860s he came into contact with James Abbot McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) and E.W. Godwin (1833-1886). By the 1870s, Jeckyll was one of the leading architects of the Aesthetic Movement. He designed an interior for the Holland Park house of the collector, Alexander Ionides (1833-1900) (who bequeathed much of his collection of paintings to the V&A) and the dining room of a house in Princes Gate. (Due to its later painted decoration by Whistler, this room became known as the Peacock Room, and is currently on display in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.) Jeckyll became mentally unstable in 1877 and died in an asylum in 1881.

H:90 W:29 D:1 CM.