FIRST QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

The sconce-fitted pier-glass, framed in a triumphal-arched and truss-scrolled 'tablet' reflects the influence of Borromini's 'Roman' architecture derived from D. de Rossi's, Studio d'Archittura Civile, 1702 . A similar mirror-bordered 'sconce' was commissioned around 1720 to harmonise with the architecture of Chicheley Hall, Buckinghamshire. Others were supplied in 1720 and 1723 for Erddig, North Wales by the Strand cabinet-maker John Pardoe and John Belchier of St. Paul's Church Yard (G. Beard (ed.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers: 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp. 661, 672 and 59 and M. Drury, 'Early Eighteenth-Century Furniture at Erddig, Apollo, July 1978, pp. 46-55, fig. 3). A closely related mirror, formerly in the collection of the Harrogate firm of Charles Lumb & Sons, is illustrated in F. L. Hinckley, Queen Anne & Georgian Looking-Glasses, New York, 1987, fig. 72.