IN THE MANNER OF THOMAS CHIPPENDALE, CIRCA 1755

These candle-branched mirrors are conceived in the French picturesque manner popularized by 'Girandole' patterns issued in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, pl. CXI, and the carver Thomas Johnson's Twelve Girandoles, 1755 (see P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1958, figs. 137-9). They represent the merging of various styles in the George II modern fashion with their whimsical lack of classical proportions, after the Chinese manner, and their fantastical combination of the folly-like spire and whimsical swan-rusticated 'gothic' pilasters fused with vegetation emblematic of the Elements.

Johnson also issued a pattern for a related acanthus-pedimented girandole in his Collection of Designs, 1758, pl. 51. This in turn relates to girandoles introduced at this period to Corsham Court, Wiltshire (O. Brackett, Thomas Chippendale, London, 1925, pl. XLII).