George II Mahogany and Parcel-Gilt Pier Mirror

Object Details

Related Objects

George II Parcel-Gilt and Mahogany Looking Glass

Unknown
ca. 1740-1750

wood; sylvestris pine; spruce; mahogany veneer; gilt gesso

Federal Parcel-Gilt and Mahogany Looking Glass

Unknown
ca. 1800-1815

wood; mahogany veneer; eastern white pine; gilt; gesso; glass

Object Essay

Large architectural pier glasses of this style were very popular among wealthy American colonists in the decades before the Revolution. Grandiose and expensive, they were probably hung between two windows in the parlor. Since American newspapers advertise carvers and gilders who list looking glasses among their accomplishments, it is possible that large and elaborate looking-glass frames were made in the colonies. Microanalysis of extant pieces, however, has shown that most were made in England or Europe.

Many survive with family histories in Boston, New York City, Albany, and Philadelphia. A pier glass nearly identical to the Collection’s example descended from Silas Talbot (1751–1813), a Revolutionary soldier and naval commander who is buried at Trinity Church in New York City.^{_{Advertisement, Antiques 112 (December 1977), 1019.}1} Another descended from Dr. William Beekman (1684–1770), also of New York City.^{2_{Private Collection, New York City.}} Two were owned by Philip Van Rensselaer (1749–1798) of Albany, one dated 1768 on the back.^{3_{Rice, nos. 1610 and 1632.}} Mrs. John E. Van Alen, the wife of a congressman from Rensselaer County, New York, received a similar looking glass with a distinctive fretwork panel in the frieze from Martha Washington.^{4_{Downs 1952, no. 256; see Fales 1976, 273, for a full history of the looking glass.}} It is documented as having been purchased in Philadelphia in 1783, where such looking glasses were available from mid-century. Winterthur owns an example bearing the label used between 1753 and 1761 by John Elliott, Sr., who made looking glasses and sold imported ones in Philadelphia.^{5_{Downs 1952, no. 255.}} Still another survives as a relic from the notoriously extravagant Mischianza Ball given by Lieutenant General Sir William Howe’s officers in the Wharton house in Philadelphia in 1778, when American soldiers were suffering at Valley Forge.^{6_{Singleton, 559; see also Hornor 1935, 275–76, 278–79.}}

As in England and on the Continent, pier glasses were paired with tables or consoles placed directly beneath them, according to documents of the colonial period. When Mrs. James Alexander of Manhattan died in 1760, she specified in her will that her youngest daughter should receive “the two Large Looking Glasses, and the two marble tables which are placed and stand near them.”^{7_{“Abstracts of Wills,” Collections of The New-York Historical Society for the Year 1896 New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1897, 5: 387.}} The Collection’s looking glass has no early history, but it can be located in the United States by 1790. Strips of a New York newspaper, which are pasted between the backboard and the frame, give several addresses corresponding to listings in the New York directories of 1789 and 1790.

Gilbert T. Vincent

Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.