Lot Essay
This scalloped mirror depicting a female lutanist, paired figures facing each other across the mirror plate, and animals in the corner ovals relates closely to an example in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight (illustrated in X.Brooke, Catalogue of Embroideries, 1992, pp.194-95). Another formerly in Viscount Wolseley's collection and subsequently in Judge Irwin Untermyer's collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is illustrated in Y.Hackenbroch, English and Other Needlework, Tapestries and Textiles in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, 1960, pl.68. A further example of this type belonging to the noted English collector Percival Griffiths is illustrated in G.S.Seligman and T.Hughes, Domestic Embroidery, pl.XXIX.