An unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum

This one was influenced by two disparate sources, Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For and Edward Gorey's The Unstrung Harp. The former once featured a strip in which most of the tchotchkes for sale at the feminist bookstore have a Venus of Willendorf theme (Venus of Willendorf coffee mugs, Venus of Willendorf boxer shorts) as well as a strip in which one of the dykes threatens to put superglue in another's "personal lubricant dispenser," a phrase that evidently stuck in my head. And the novelist Mr. Earbrass in Gorey's book receives a gift from an admirer of "an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum." I had to look up epergne, but that phrase also stuck in my head. The whole passage that contains it is wonderful: "Mr. Earbrass returned from a walk to find a large carton blocking the hall. Masses of brown paper and then tissue have reluctantly given up an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum. Mr. Earbrass recollects a letter from a hitherto unknown admirer of his work, received the week before; it hinted at the early arrival of an offering that embodied, in a different but kindred form, the same high-souled aspiration that animated its recipient's books. Mr. Earbrass can only conclude that the apathy of the lower figures is due to their having been deprived of novels."