THE DESIGN ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN VARDY

Details

A GEORGE III GILTWOOD PIER GLASS
The design attributed to John Vardy
The main lower plate with rounded angles and a frame of climbing palm leaves below a conforming oval plate and in a mirrored border with foliate cresting centred by an overhanging acanthus leaf finial with a leaf cup top, the sides with pendant bell flowers and the lower angles with conforming C-scrolls, lacking part of applied bell flowers
80 in. x 44 in. (203 cm. x 112 cm.)

Provenance

Supplied to the 5th Duke of Bolton (d.1765) for the passage or bedchamber adjoining his own Dressing Room at Hackwood.
By descent until sold in 1935 with Hackwood to William Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose (d.1954).
Thence by descent.

Literature

The 1765 Inventory, 'Passage and Bed Chamber Adjoining' (His Grace's Dressing Room): 'A Fine Sconce Glass in Carvd and Gilt Frame'.
This mirror was still there in 1795 when the inventory was annotated 'Not a sconce glass but a glass in division - middle plate 2.3 by 3.3 Top plate 1.5 by 2.3'.

Special notice

VAT rate of 17.5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer’s premium.

Lot Essay

The design for this mirror-bordered pier-glass, executed for the 5th Duke of Bolton (d.1765), evolved from those designed by John Vardy (d.1765) for the Drawing Room at Hackwood. The paired palm-wrapped pilasters rise from acathus-wrapped cartouches and form an ogival pediment, which may have originally been surmounted by the Bolton coronet. The frame's design demonstrates Vardy's awareness of the French 'picturesque' style of the 1730s. His designs for the pier furnishings of the Saloon, for instance, incorporate elements derived from Gabriel Huquier's Oeuvre de Juste Aurele Meissonier, published in the late 1740s. His palm tree ornament on this mirror also relates to one of his frame patterns propoed in 1759 for the overmantels of Lord Leicester's Saloon at Holkham Hall, Norfolk (J. Cornforth, 'Vardy and Holkham', Country Life, 25 August 1988, p. 141).
A palm tree tripartite mirror, designed by Timothy Lightoler (d.1769) featured in William Halfpenny's Modern Builder's Assistant, 1757, pl. LXVIII.

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