Live Auction 14223The English Collector: English Furniture, Clocks, European Ceramics & Portrait Miniatures
A CHINESE EXPORT GILTWOOD AND BLACK AND GILT-JAPANNED GIRANDOLE
Lot 68 PROPERTY FROM VILLA AGNESI IN MONTEVECCHIA, LOMBARDY

A CHINESE EXPORT GILTWOOD AND BLACK AND GILT-JAPANNED GIRANDOLE

LATE 18TH CENTURY

Closed17 May 2017

Price Realised

GBP 2,000

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A CHINESE EXPORT GILTWOOD AND BLACK AND GILT-JAPANNED GIRANDOLE
LATE 18TH CENTURY
The oval plate with japanned roundels, the apron with scrolling acanthus centred by a japanned panel, with paper label 'X.1114 oval lacquer toilet mirror', the original backboard ebonised and painted with gilt scrolling foliage, re-gilt, with traces of an earlier layer of gilding
37 x 19 in. (94 x 48 cm.)

William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (d. 1925), bought from M Harris & Sons, 5 May 1916.
Christie's, South Kensington, Avon Antiques, 'A West Country Tradition,' 21 May 2009, lot 184.

Specialist note

The mirror corresponds to a surviving 1773 design by the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker John Linnell (d.1796) for a Mr Price, and which featured a similarly framed oval girandole overmantel mirror crowned by a laurel-festooned sacred urn (see H Hayward, 'The Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria & Albert Museum,' Furniture History, 1969 fig. 57.). Export wares frequently followed closely published source material, and the elaborate girandole offered here shares its oval form with other Chinese lacquer dressing-mirrors that were intended for export to the West (see Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, Woodbridge, 1991, p. 284, pl. 162 and 163).
The inventory label indicates that the mirror was acquired by the connoisseur William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (d.1925) from M Harris & Sons on the 5 May 1916.