George II Parcel-Gilt and Mahogany Looking Glass

Object Details

Related Objects

George II Mahogany and Parcel-Gilt Pier Mirror

Unknown
ca. 1740-1770

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

Federal Parcel-Gilt and Mahogany Looking Glass

Unknown
ca. 1800-1815

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

Object Essay

With its combination of baroque and neo-Palladian architectural elements, this looking glass is the epitome of popular early Georgian design.^{1_{Miller 1985, 60–61.}} Its form derives from the architecture of Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Jones was patronized by a small, elite group led by the court of Charles I, and his work was disseminated by the successful English architects William Kent (1685–1748) and James Gibbs (1682–1754). Direct prototypes for this form of looking glass were published in Kent’s The Designs of Inigo Jones (1727), plate 63, and in Gibbs’s A Book Architecture (1728), plate 91.

The curvilinear forms of the broken scroll pediment ending in rosettes with small, leafy pendants and the multiple, serpentine curves of the base reflect aspects of baroque design. The carefully balanced proportions and strong geometric framework, including classical egg-and-dart molding, stem from the didactic vocabulary of the neo-Palladians led by Richard Boyle (1694–1753), the third Earl of Burlington, a vocabulary promulgated by Kent.

The explicitly architectural character of the object owes most to Kent’s innovative reworking of the English interior in the mid-1720s, when he began designing furnishings en suite with his architectural interiors. Looking glasses of this type, often called pier glasses, resemble door and window surrounds and, in the hands of architects like Kent, became part of a decorative scheme that unified all the elements of a room. Another decorative feature Kent used effectively is parcel (partial) gilt, the combination of gilded moldings and carvings on a background of natural walnut or mahogany.

To fabricate large, flat, clear pieces of glass required skill and expertise. The few American glass houses of the colonial period were almost all financial catastrophes and short-lived. None is known to have been capable of producing glass of the quality needed for fine looking glasses. Nevertheless, looking glasses were much sought after, and the glass, as well as most of the frames, were imported. For example, in 1761, Sidney Breese advertised in The New-York Mercury that he had “Just imported from London . . . Looking Glasses, framed in the newest taste.”^{2_{Gottesman 1938, 133.}} It is not known when this particular example came to the United States, but it is similar to many with strong colonial histories (see Acc. No. 64.51).

The gesso-gilt on this looking glass is particularly fine, with the added detail of pin and bird’s-eye punch decoration around the leaf carving. The glass, with its soft bevel around the edge, is original. The cartouche is one of two popular 18th-century designs, as suggested by the advertisement from Minshull’s Looking Glass Store that listed “Birds and baskets of flowers, for the top of book cases or glass frames” among items in stock in 1775.^{3_{Ibid., 132. The name is spelled Minshall in earlier advertisements.}}

Gilbert Tapley Vincent and Joseph T. Butler

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.