The serpentined mirror, with fretted reed-wrapped frame, is designed in the George II 'picturesque' manner popularised by Thomas Chippendale's, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, London, 1st ed., 1754. However its ornament, comprising Venus's shell-badge emerging from voluted scrolls of flower-festooned Roman acanthus, as well as the cabochons bubbling its scalloped-border and crest-cartouche, relates in particular to mirror-frame patterns issued in Thomas Johnson's, Collection of Designs, 1758. It also relates to mirror frames executed by the Edinburgh cabinet-maker William Matthie, and in particular to that supplied in 1759 for Dumfries House (F. Bamford, 'A Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers 1660-1840', Furniture History, 1983, pl.12. The mirror is likely to have been acquired by Charles Hamilton, 8th Earl of Haddington, who succeeded to the Tyninghame estate in 1753.