A GEORGE III MAHOGANY CHEVAL MIRROR

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Details

A GEORGE III MAHOGANY CHEVAL MIRROR
Inlaid overall with boxwood lines, the rectangular plate within a rotating and adjustable rising rectangular frame with pierced handle cresting, the uprights with chevron panels of goncalo alves wood surmounted by neo-classical urn finials and joined by a baluster stretcher, on downswept tapering S-pattern legs with foliate-carved scroll feet, with handwritten label to the panelled mahogany back '31 cheval mirror'
54¼ in. (137.5 cm.) high; 23¼ in. (59 cm.) wide; 26½ in. (67 cm.) deep

Provenance

Bought from Norman Adams, June 1967.

Literature

C. Claxton Stevens and S. Whittington, 18th Century English Furniture, The Norman Adams Collection, Woodbridge, rev. ed., 1985, pp. 436-437 ('The elegance and quality of this piece is exceptional... ').

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

The Aldersgate Street cabinet-maker Thomas Shearer contributed a pattern for a related 'Screen Dressing Glass Frame', with urn-capped pillars, to The Cabinet-Maker's London Book of Prices, 1788; this also included this pattern of serpentined 'claw', (pls. 18, fig. 4 and pl. 29.)
This mirror, with handle-fretted cornice, relates to the type described as a 'Horse dressing glass' in Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, and noted as 'a kind of tall dressing-glass suspended by two pillars and claws the standards of these glasses are sometimes glued up hollow, to admit a weight on each side equal of the glass and frame, by which means the glass is raised to any height the same as a sash window'.

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