A George II Carved and Gilded Mirror Attributed to Matthias Lock, Circa 1765

Private Collection, London

Rolleston, London

Matthias Lock's designs for mirrors were the first in England to represent the Rococo style, a new import from France that would rapidly become highly fashionable. His Six Sconces were published in 1744 and contain all of the C-scrolls, foliate tendrils, fluidity of decoration and general whimsy that are familiar from the best-known later practitioners of the Rococo in England, including Chippendale and Thomas Johnson. Lock's designs show variety between examples and over the course of his career, and the present mirror aligns with the sense of proportion and measure in his earlier works: compared with some of the flights of fancy that Rococo would later bring, there is a symmetrical robustness to Lock's earlier designs that is reflected in the present lot. One of the more fanciful of these early Six Sconces features a shell issuing a stream of water in a way that resembles the upturned vase on the base of the present example (see the Victoria and Albert Museum, 27811:6). While the crests of his mirrors consistently feature a more 'stable' architectural element amid the surrounding bustle of Rococo ornament, it is in the New Book of Ornament in 1752 that these begin to take a more chinoiserie-influenced form, including pagodas on plates 5 and 6 that parallel the present lot.¹

¹ See E. White (ed.), Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design: The Printed Sources, Woodbridge, 1990, p.328.