THE VERRE ÉGLOMISÉ PANELS PROBABLY CIRCA 1700 AND REUSED

The very fashionable late 17th-century English Huguenot marriage of colored verre églomisé backed by interlaced designs after the engravings of Bérain and Marot can be seen in an elegant group of mirrors of which the present lot is part. All of these mirrors have rectangular plates framed by verre églomisé panels (sometimes bevelled) set between two carved moldings. The cresting is the point of difference: on one type of mirror, the plate is surmounted by an additional arched plate within the verre-églomisé surround, which is then surmounted by a pierced and scrolled cresting; on the other type, the cresting is a separate verre-églomisé element from the lower section surmounted by a pierced and scrolled cresting. Two mirrors of the first type in the Victoria & Albert Museum date to circa 1707 and are attributed to Thomas and René Pelletier; one is from Halnaby, Yorkshire (T. Murdoch, 'Jean, René and Thomas Pelletier, a Hugenot family of carvers and gilders in England 1682-1726. Part II', The Burlington Magazine (June 1998), p. 371, figs. 16 & 17). A pair from the second group with very rare red verre églomisé panels is in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, probably ordered by the 2nd Duke, and display the additional feature of ormolu clasps at the centers and angles where the panels, which were each generally half the length of one side, meet (D. Devonshire, Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View, London, 1991, p. 218, ill. p. 219); another of this type with glass clasps formerly with Mallet, London was in the collection of Louise Melhado, New York (sold Sotheby's New York, 13 December 1986, lot 97 ($99,000) and is illustrated in F. L. Hinckley, Queen Anne & Georgian Looking Glasses: Old English and Early American, New York, 1987, p. 72, pl. 46.