MID-18TH CENTURY

This pair of wall appliques in the 'French’ taste is modelled on a design for a girandole by Thomas Johnson, published in his One Hundred & Fifty New Designs (1761), plate 34, which in turn was probably inspired by similar rococo models by Lock & Copeland in their A New Book of Ornaments (1752). Many of the significant designers and carvers in wood, Lock, Johnson, Mayhew & Ince and Luke Lightfoot drew on engravings after Francis Barlow’s drawings of animals and birds first issued between 1658 and 1670, and particularly his illustrations for Aesop’s Fables, which they included within the rococo composition of a mirror frame, girandole or chimneypiece. Thus the swan motif of these mirrors is almost certainly derived from Barlow’s 'Two Swans’ issued in the mid-18th century (H. Hayward, 'Engraved Ornamental Designs after Francis Barlow’, Furniture History, vol. 11, 1975, fig. 106).