Lot Essay
The architectural-cornered frame, with Grecian palm-flowered and acanthus-scrolled pediment, has glass borders edged by acanthus-husks, Etruscan-pearl strings and flowered ribbon-guilloche and relates to mirror-patterns of the late 1770s executed by John Linnell of Berkeley Square and preserved in the firm's archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum (H. Hayward, 'The Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria and Albert Museum', Furniture History, 1969, figs. 73, 89, 110 and 128). Its elegant architecture reflects the George III Roman Etruscan fashion popularised in the 1770s by the Rome-trained court architect Robert Adam's, Works in Architecture. Amongst the contemporary London carvers, gilders and papier-mâché makers, perhaps the most celebrated was William Duffour (d. 1784) of Berwick Street (see G. Beard and C. Gilbert (eds), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers: 1600-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 258).