France, circa 1860

gilt wood, glass

Please note that this piece currently located in Hong Kong

As technology for producing mirror plates became ever more sophisticated, the possible size of each mirror plate grew larger and less costly to purchase. This allowed for nineteenth-century homes to contain sizeable mirrors like the present example that enclosed vast single mirror plates, an almost unimaginable luxury for the vast majority in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Louis XIV flooded Versailles with light by creating an extravagant ‘Hall of Mirrors’ in the 1680s, the mirrors were made of numerous smaller plates that were pieced together in geometric formation, and most wall mirrors of the eighteenth century contain a larger plate that is bordered by smaller plates to add mass. The present mirror employs architectural details, beading, acanthus leaves and ribbons that are straight out of the eighteenth century, yet the luxury of this large a mirror plate would not have been technically possible in eighteenth-century society.