Pair of Mirrors

Hung high on the garden side wall of the dining room, these two stately English-made mirrors have been an elegant feature of the space since they were purchased in 1954. The mirrors feature intricately carved details: a shell cartouche decorates the bottom, and on the top is a swan’s neck centering  on a Prince of Wales plume above pendant tassel rope, a popular furniture motif throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The mirrors date to the mid-1730’s and were purchased from Longner Hall in Shropshire, England, an estate designed by John Nash. The Burton family still owns the property, an ancestral home for 700 years. Depending on the location of the mirrors inside the house, they may have reflected the extensive outdoor park at   Longner Hall that was designed by celebrated landscape architect Humphrey Repton in the early 19th century.

In England only 40% of the population owned at least one mirror by 1740; a much smaller percentage of people were able to afford items of this quality. Likely made for the Burton family originally, these mirrors were objects of conspicuous consumption that held the power to instantly convey the wealth and taste of the owner. Mirrors like this were made from blown glass cut into sheets and then coated with  a reflective tin and mercury mixture. This technique was used only in Europe until the mid-19th century so American makers produced the frame, not the looking glass itself. German scientist Justus von Liebig created the process of adding silver nitrate coating to clear glass  in 1835. This innovation helped pave the way for the mass consumption of looking glasses as we know them today around the world.