A Large Regency Gilt and Ebonised Wood Convex Mirror, Circa 1810

Michael Lipitch, London;

The Collection of Mr and Mrs Stephen C. Hilbert, Sotheby's New York, 24 May 2007, lot 76.

For Thomas Sheraton in his 1806 Cabinet Dictionary, this convex form of mirror is so dominant that it forms the definition of ‘mirror’ itself: he describes a mirror as “a circular convex glass in a gilt frame, silvered on the concave side” and “produc[ing] an agreeable effect” of perspective.¹ This is remarkable, not least because other styles of mirror like pier and cheval mirrors continued to have flat mirror glass throughout the Regency, and bears witness to just how fashionable the round convex mirror was in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Curved, convex glass had a long history in European mirror manufacture, and are centrally important both to van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434) and to Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (c.1524), but it was in the 1790s when the fashion apparently came from France and came to enjoy a few decades of great popularity in British interiors. Even after the period passed by, they would continue to be seen as a signature of the Regency style; in the well-known 1882 watercolour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his antiques-studded flat at 16 Cheyne Walk, several Regency convex mirrors can be spotted on the wall (NPG 3022).

While this form of Regency mirror is often adorned with carved foliage, this usually takes the form of dense, acanthus-style leaves. The present mirror, though, is framed with narrower, delicate leaves that are assumedly palm fronds – this is a far rarer choice, though can be seen on a mirror at Grantham House in Lincolnshire (NT 493426) and on a two mirrors both sold at Christie’s in the 2000s.² Other divergences from the more typical acanthus leaf include oak leaves and vine leaves.³

Another notable motif on the present mirror is a more typical one, the suspended chain with gilt spheres held in the mouth of the eagle. The origin and function of this rather specific feature was the subject of a reader question to Country Life in 1953, in which the response stated that they “have no particular significance” and that the motif “seems to have appealed to Regency eyes for the elegant curves of the chains and for the conceit which makes the eagle appear to be about to carry them away”.⁴ This tentative answer is not quite as convincing as the double explanation given by Graham Child: his argument was that the “origin of this [motif] is thought to lie in the tactic of firing chained cannon balls from battle ships in order to demast the enemy”, which feels logical given the overtly nautical flavour of so much Regency design, and he also notes that the suspended chains also served to prevent flies from coming into contact with the mirror glass.⁵

¹ T. Sheraton, The Cabinet Dictionary, New York 1970, vol II, p.271.

² Christie’s London, 18 October 2005, lot 563; Christie’s London, 20 November 2008, lot 592.

³ for the oak leaves, see Sotheby’s London, 15 November 1996, lot 97. For vine leaves, see Christie’s London, 20 November 2008, lot 592

⁴ Country Life, 13 February 1953, p.409.

⁵ G. Child, World Mirrors 1650 – 1900, London 1990, p.151.