CIRCA 1775, IN THE MANNER OF JOHN LINNELL

This pair of Grecian palm-flowered and laurel-festooned pier-glasses, with Etruscan pearl-wreathed medallion frames, reflect the George III antique fashion promoted by the Rome-trained architect Robert Adam (d.1792). The heart-shaped frames relate to his girandole pattern of 1770 executed for Robert Child as Osterley Park, Middlesex by John Linnell (d.1796), the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker (M. Tomlin, Catalogue of Adam Period Furniture, London, 1982, pp. 32-33.). Further, they can be associated with a surviving 1773 design by John Linnell which featured a similarly framed oval girandole overmantel mirror crowned by a laurel-festooned sacred urn (see H Hayward, 'The Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria & Albert Museum,' Furniture History, 1969, fig. 57).