EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Appropriate for furnishing an early Georgian bedroom apartment, the tall mirror-bordered pier-glass has the fretted cresting of its head-plate japanned as trompe l'oeil lacquer with a Chinese pavillioned landscape in the manner made fashionable by Messrs. Stalker and Parker's Treatise on Japanning and Varnishing, Oxford, 1688. The mirror may have formed part of the furnishings belonging to the celebrated Matthew Boulton at Soho House, Birmingham and subsequently moved to Tew Park, Oxfordshire which was purchased in 1816 by his son, Matthew Robinson Boulton (d. 1842). Among the furniture sold from Tew at the Christie's house sale, 27-29 May 1987, were a black and gold-lacquer cabinet (lot 137), a black and gold-japanned side cabinet (lot 139), a Japanese lacquer cabinet-on-stand (lot 140) and a set of five ebonised and parcel-gilt open armchairs (lot 142). The latter came from Soho House, so it seems likely that this whole group came from Soho House as it is so completely different to the furniture that was made for Tew (supplied by George Bullock and G. J. Morant). It relates to a pair of similarly japanned pier-glasses that formed part of the antique furniture collection assembled by Percival Griffiths, and illustrated in R.W. Symonds, English Furniture from Charles II to George II, London, 1929 (p. 284, fig. 227).