Lot Essay
The serpentined mirror-bordered frame, designed to display the glass and head-glass of an earlier 18th Century mirror, is conceived in the George III French picturesque manner. Its Roman husk-festooned, scrolled and acanthus-wrapped ribbons enclose a rustic urn-capped triumphal arch beneath a voluted and antique-fluted pediment. Its composition celebrates Venus, the nature-goddess, and is crowned by her triumphal shell-badge, while another sacred urn is festooned beneath by poetic laurels. Its general form evolved from that of a design, with flower-basket finial, executed in the late 1750s by William and John Linnell cabinet-makers and upholsterers of Berkeley Square (H. Hayward and P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, vol. II, fig. 186). A pair of related pier glasses, reusing old mirrors and in part inspired by the same design, was supplied to Sir Monoux Cope, 7th Baronet (d. 1765) for Bramshill, Hampshire (Hayward and Kirkham, ibid., vol. II, fig. 188). The present pier glass is likely to have been designed by John Linnell, who was the author of A New Book of Ornaments useful for silver-smith's etc., 1760. (Hayward and Kirkham, ibid., pp. 314-8), but its architecture reflects the movement towards a more chaste classical elegance during the 1760s.