LATE 17TH CENTURY, ORIGINALLY WITH A CRESTING AND APRON

The pier-glass is parquetry-veneered in exotic laburnum and marquetry-inlaid in the Louis Quatorze manner with arch-headed tablets of richly-flowered ebony. An ebony-veneered mirror with allover foliate-scroll decoration was likely to have been commissioned by John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (d. 1682) around the time of his marriage to Elizabeth, Duchess of Lauderdale in 1672 and may be the 'Looking glasse frame of Ebony flower'd' listed in the 1679 inventory (P. Thornton & M. Tomlin, 'The Furnishing and Decoration of Ham House', Furniture History, 1980, p. 105, fig. 140). Such furniture was also referred to in the seventeenth century as being of 'Markatree carved with flowers and finely coloured'.

Among the leading exponents of this French style of marquetry outside
Paris was the Amsterdam ebeniste, Jan van Mekeren (d. 1733), and the marquetry of this mirror may have been executed by Dutch craftsmen working in London. Similar mirrors veneered on a walnut ground include: The Property of a Gentleman, Christie's London, 1 April 1993, lot 46; Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 29 September 1995, lot 1; and the late W.H. Simpson Esq., Christie's London, 22 May 1969, lot 144. An example incorporating birds and a gilt inner slip was sold Christie's London, 29 November 2001, lot 14.