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Lot Essay
Described as a "masterpiece" by Albert Sack, this rare pair of Chippendale looking glasses exemplifies the height of late eighteenth century fashion in America (The New Fine Points of Furniture (New York, 1993), p. 226). These exquisite mates, displaying facing phoenixes within their crests and a gilded vine detail surround, are most likely of English origin. A virtually identical mirror (fig. 1) found in eastern Massacusetts and identified as English, is suggestive of both the desire for the form in America and trans-Atlantic nature of its design.
By the early 1800's the Boston-based firm of Bittle & Cooper was selling looking glasses of a similar aesthetic (fig. 2). While slightly less ornate in overall composition, it bears a Bittle and Cooper label stating: "Burnish Gilders" and "Warranted faithfully made." Helen Comstock comments that this guarantee should "suggest that it is an original work." Around the same time others such as John Elliot, an English cabinetmaker who moved to Philadelphia in 1758, started importing and selling looking glasses of this type. A similar set of mirrors was advertised by Israel Sack in The Magazine Antiques (April 1968), and listed as having descended through the Percival-Helmuth families of Philadelphia. The employment of gilt vine tracery along the fret, however, is a stylistic detail that turns up in the Massachusetts region.
Since mirrored glass plate and frames were already in widespread production in England during the mid-eighteenth century, it seems both logical and economical for a large amount of these to have been manufactured abroad and later imported to America. The use of the phoenix, illustrated in several design books by Thomas Chippendale and listed in bills of sale as "gilt birds," also alludes to a taste for the chinoiserie styles of the Far East.
By the early 1800's the Boston-based firm of Bittle & Cooper was selling looking glasses of a similar aesthetic (fig. 2). While slightly less ornate in overall composition, it bears a Bittle and Cooper label stating: "Burnish Gilders" and "Warranted faithfully made." Helen Comstock comments that this guarantee should "suggest that it is an original work." Around the same time others such as John Elliot, an English cabinetmaker who moved to Philadelphia in 1758, started importing and selling looking glasses of this type. A similar set of mirrors was advertised by Israel Sack in The Magazine Antiques (April 1968), and listed as having descended through the Percival-Helmuth families of Philadelphia. The employment of gilt vine tracery along the fret, however, is a stylistic detail that turns up in the Massachusetts region.
Since mirrored glass plate and frames were already in widespread production in England during the mid-eighteenth century, it seems both logical and economical for a large amount of these to have been manufactured abroad and later imported to America. The use of the phoenix, illustrated in several design books by Thomas Chippendale and listed in bills of sale as "gilt birds," also alludes to a taste for the chinoiserie styles of the Far East.