This overmantel mirror, with serpentined and flower-festooned frame is conceived in the George II picturesque manner popularised by Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directors of 1754-62. Its 'Venus' shell-capped and triumphal-arched glass is surmounted by a palm-framed head glass. This may once have contained a portrait after the contemporary taste for surmounting a chimneypiece with 'a chimney-piece glass and picture'.
With its rustic-trussed pilasters and lambrequined pediment framing Love's sacred urn, it relates in particular to 'Chimney Piece' engravings of 1761 issued in the 3rd edition of the Director of 1762 (pls. 182-4; E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of English 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 375).

THE GILDING
This mirror has been repaired in patches rather than being fully regilded. The mirror was originally water gilded over a clay which is much darker than the clays used on the other pieces of Bolton giltwood furniture. Even darker clay is used for the water gilded patches.