This pair of mirrors is en suite with the General Abraham Berry card tables which follow and share the same family provenance; it is possible that they may well have originally been placed over the tables in General Berry's home in Brooklyn Heights as was often the fashion. Pairs of pier mirrors are extremely rare, with only two other sets known, both of which are in museums. One pair, labeled by John Doggett, is in the Bybee Collection while the other two are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Venable, American Furniture in the Bybee Collection (Dallas, 1989), fig. 42; Davidson and Stillinger, The American Wing (New York, 1985), fig. 227.)

Looking glasses of this size were extremely expensive at their time of manufacture. The imported silvered glass and gold leaf alone were extravagant costs to both the manufacturer and client. John Doggett, for example, sold a pair slightly larger in size and probably with carved elements to Boston merchant Andrew Cunningham in 1807 at the exhorbitant cost of $327.00 (see Venable, fig. 42).

The bacchanal eglomisé scene and classical elements depicted on the frame of this pair of looking glasses reflect the enthusiasm for the antique that was evident on furniture of the Federal era even before the heyday of the classical influence.

See Sack 1981, 1:156 now at St. Louis Museum of Art