Child, Graham, World Mirrors 1650-1900 (London, 1990)
Schiffer, Herbert F., The Mirror Book (New York, 1983)
Wills, Geoffrey, English Looking Glasses (1670-1820) (London, 1965)
A George III carved and gilded mirror of transitional Rococo design, the cresting carved with acanthus and fruit, above a rectangular plate within boarder plates, framed with architectural pilasters and similarly carved acanthus decoration.
This mirror stands out for its fluent carving and particularly large scale. The design demonstrates not only the carver’s painstaking attention to detail, but his masterful apprehension of the transitional Rococo style. Sumptuously decorated with a writhing abundance C-scrolls and fronds, fruits, berries and cornucopias, this example embodies the exuberant character of mid-eighteenth-century design.
As the eighteenth century progressed, classicism slowly returned to fashion. On the strength of visits to the great ancient sights of Europe, Grant Tourists arrived back inspired to create order in contrast to the wild asymmetry of the rococo. The excavations of Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites from 1748 onwards were a revelation to architects, patrons and designers. The interiors and detailed wall paintings of these remarkably well-preserved ruins dramatically showed the lighter domestic richness of the ancients. Previous generations’ sources for classicism had been only the monumental civic architecture of temples and public buildings extolled by Vitruvius and afterwards by Palladio and his followers. But with the publication in 1764 of Ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalato by the young architect and champion of neoclassicism, Robert Adam (1728-1792), so began the ‘Adam Revolution’ which would change taste as it had never been before.
Chippendale and his circle were quick to sense this change and they began to adapt their designs in their new publications, as shown by his third edition of the Director published in 1762, Ince and Mayhew’s The Universal System of Household Furniture of the same year, and Matthias Lock’s 1769 A New Book of Pier-Frames.
The present mirror possesses all the features of classic transitional design, with the rectangular form embodying the order of classicism, but with the surrounding carved surface decoration of C-scrolls and foliage and momentary asymmetry evoking the playfulness of the rococo. Of note is the classical urn surmounting the mirror and the cornucopia outpouring. Such motifs of berries and leaves, present across the surface of the mirror, are a documented ancient design and a hallmark of early classical design in the eighteenth century.