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Lot Essay
This pattern of mirror corresponds to a pair of pier-glass frames designed in the George II 'picturesque' fashion for Ramsbury, Wiltshire They are illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, vol. II, p. 339, fig. 72, and were sold by the Trustees of the late Sir Francis Burdett, 8th Bt., in these Rooms, 22 October 1953, lot 111.
The Ramsbury frames celebrate the Elements with imbricated and truss-scrolled pilasters festooned with fruit and flowers and bearing hermed heads, each of a rustic gardener and his female companion. A bubbled embossed clouded cartouche is displayed in their triumphal-arched pediments, while bubbled and sun-rayed cartouches with wings are displayed at the bases. The present mirror-bordered pier-glass relates closely to the latter and also features foliage-capped rustics with native 'Indian' foliated head-dresses, after the French-Chinese fashion. The rustic pilaster also appears in a design for a related pier-glass supported by a winged dolphin mask cartouche, in the sketch-book of the celebrated carver Matthias Lock (P. Ward Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the 18th Century, London, 1958, pl. 51 and pl. 66). Lock was the author of various pattern books such as Six Sconces, 1744, and A New Book of Ornaments for Looking Glass Frames, 1752. Lock's ornamental engravings after the French fashion were to gain him contemporary recognition as England's 'best draftsman in that way'.
The parallel with the pair of mirrors from Ramsbury is so close in design, ornament and execution that the three mirrors are certainly by the same maker. The Ramsbury pair were presumably made for the principal bedroom apartment, which in the 18th century was hung with Chinese landscape paper, after the fashion introduced by Parisian marchands merciers and the East India trade (H.A. Tipping, 'Ramsbury Manor - II', Country Life, 9 October 1920, pp. 472-473.) It is obviously possible that this mirror was designed for William Jones of Ramsbury, in additon to the pair that remained there in 1953. All three of these mirrors, and a further pair of this type that is illustrated in L. Synge, Mallett's Great English Furniture, London, 1991, p. 86, fig. 91, have divided plates which suggests that they were made re-using plates from earlier mirrors, In this respect they differ from the locus classicus of these mirrors, that made by Matthias Lock himself, probably in the mid-1740s, for Earl Poulett at Hinton House, Somerset. (J.F. Hayward, 'Furniture designed and carved by Matthias Lock for Hinton House, Somerset', Connoisseur, January 1961, pp. 284-286). This mirror is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has a single plate and so was made using a new plate.
The sunburst-centred serpentine cresting has a curious parallel in the group of pier-glasses supplied to the Earl of Dumfries in 1759 by Alexander Mathie of Edinburgh. Two of the pairs of Dumfries mirrors have either cresting or apron centred by a Thistle star, Lord Dumfries having been a Knight of that order since 1752. These pier-glasses are illustrated in F. Bamford, 'Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers', Furniture History, 1983, pls. 14 and 15.
The Ramsbury frames celebrate the Elements with imbricated and truss-scrolled pilasters festooned with fruit and flowers and bearing hermed heads, each of a rustic gardener and his female companion. A bubbled embossed clouded cartouche is displayed in their triumphal-arched pediments, while bubbled and sun-rayed cartouches with wings are displayed at the bases. The present mirror-bordered pier-glass relates closely to the latter and also features foliage-capped rustics with native 'Indian' foliated head-dresses, after the French-Chinese fashion. The rustic pilaster also appears in a design for a related pier-glass supported by a winged dolphin mask cartouche, in the sketch-book of the celebrated carver Matthias Lock (P. Ward Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the 18th Century, London, 1958, pl. 51 and pl. 66). Lock was the author of various pattern books such as Six Sconces, 1744, and A New Book of Ornaments for Looking Glass Frames, 1752. Lock's ornamental engravings after the French fashion were to gain him contemporary recognition as England's 'best draftsman in that way'.
The parallel with the pair of mirrors from Ramsbury is so close in design, ornament and execution that the three mirrors are certainly by the same maker. The Ramsbury pair were presumably made for the principal bedroom apartment, which in the 18th century was hung with Chinese landscape paper, after the fashion introduced by Parisian marchands merciers and the East India trade (H.A. Tipping, 'Ramsbury Manor - II', Country Life, 9 October 1920, pp. 472-473.) It is obviously possible that this mirror was designed for William Jones of Ramsbury, in additon to the pair that remained there in 1953. All three of these mirrors, and a further pair of this type that is illustrated in L. Synge, Mallett's Great English Furniture, London, 1991, p. 86, fig. 91, have divided plates which suggests that they were made re-using plates from earlier mirrors, In this respect they differ from the locus classicus of these mirrors, that made by Matthias Lock himself, probably in the mid-1740s, for Earl Poulett at Hinton House, Somerset. (J.F. Hayward, 'Furniture designed and carved by Matthias Lock for Hinton House, Somerset', Connoisseur, January 1961, pp. 284-286). This mirror is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has a single plate and so was made using a new plate.
The sunburst-centred serpentine cresting has a curious parallel in the group of pier-glasses supplied to the Earl of Dumfries in 1759 by Alexander Mathie of Edinburgh. Two of the pairs of Dumfries mirrors have either cresting or apron centred by a Thistle star, Lord Dumfries having been a Knight of that order since 1752. These pier-glasses are illustrated in F. Bamford, 'Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers', Furniture History, 1983, pls. 14 and 15.