A mid eighteenth-century Chinese export painting on beveled mirror glass, depicting ladies taking tea in a pagoda, the background with a river, buildings, and mountainous landscape, set in its original black and gilt japanned frame.
The mirrored picture has a beveled edge, a sign of quality, and has not been altered in size. The rarest forms of these pictures are done in landscapes such as this example. Ladies drinking tea is a charming and also unusual depiction.
The mirrors were made in England, by hand, and then silvered using mercury, a process requiring high heat that produced poisonous fumes. It was a delicate process, and as one can imagine many glass plates will have been damaged and lost in this process.
The plates that survived were shipped to China through the East India Company. Once they arrived they were painted. This was done by removing a section of the mercury silvering, leaving the rest of the painting silvered (usually sea- and skyscapes).
Once the painting had been completed, they were baked in an oven at high heat. Again, this was another perilous moment in their production, and many will have been lost.
On completion, the surviving mirror plates were shipped back from China to England. The whole process would have taken years, and it is remarkable indeed that mirror paintings such as this have survived.