LATE 18TH CENTURY

The frame's reed-clustered columns and 'picturesque' room-reflecting medallion glass reflects the antique fashion promoted in the late l8th century by the architect, Sir John Soane (d.1837), and popularised by Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist's Encyclopaedia, 1804-6. Such beribboned reeds, were also much favoured at this period by the Wardour Street cabinet-maker, James Newton (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, p. 353). A poetic laurel-baguette frames the Grecian bronzed tablet (that incorporates the convex-glass), which was a popular feature of contemporary overmantel mirrors, while the ribbon-tied pastoral-tablet of Cupid and his companions would probably have harmonised with the ornament of parlour/drawing-room chairs. The mirror, which came from Stapleford Park, Leicestershire, is likely to have been commissioned for the house by Philip Sherard, Earl of Harborough (d. 1807), shortly after his marriage in 1791.