Lot Essay
The pier glasses' serpentined and mirror-edged frame incorporates French picturesque ornament of the 1730's celebrating Nature's abundance. A triumphal arch of Pan's sacred reeds are festooned with fruit and flowers suspended from the outer moulded border. while the inner reed border also features on a pair of mirrors supplied in the mid-1750's for Hagley Hall, Worcestershire (P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, p. 345, fig. 91). Its bubbled cartouche at the base, serpentined form and fruit swag feature in Matthias Lock's Six Sconces, 1744, pl. 5; while its general form relates to a pier-glass pattern in M. Lock and H. Copland's, New Book of Ornaments, 1752, pl. 3.
Related mirrors were suppied for Hampden House, Buckinghamshire in the 1750's (see the Moller Collection, sold Sotheby's, London, 18 November 1993, lot 87).
Related mirrors were suppied for Hampden House, Buckinghamshire in the 1750's (see the Moller Collection, sold Sotheby's, London, 18 November 1993, lot 87).