Lot Essay
These serpentined and mirror-framed pier-glasses are designed in the picturesque/Oriental manner promoted by Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director (1754-1763), and are typical of the work executed at this period by the celebrated Mayfair cabinet-makers Messrs. William and John Linnell of Berkeley Square. The pair is conceived as acanthus-scrolled triumphal-arches, whose flower-wreathed pilasters are entwined by craggy trees overhanging the glass, like lakeside trees of an oriental garden, while their scroll-arched pediments provide lambrequined perches for confronted Chinese rustic figures that support huge pagoda-swept shades. The various elements of their composition feature in patterns for pier-glasses prepared for engraving and preserved among the firm's archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see John Chance's tracing of the Linnell pattern published in H.Hayward, William and John Linnell, 1980, vol. II, p. 82, fig. 159). Another Linnell composition of similar character featured a standing rustic figure (see H.Hayward, op.cit., fig. 75); and another with similar craggy trees provided the pattern for a pair executed by the Linnells and which is now in the H.M. de Younge Memorial Museum, San Francisco (ibid, vol. I, pl. 2 and vol. II, fig 204).