An extremely rare and important small pair of late 17th century carved giltwood elaborately shaped oval mirrors with red verre églomisé borders retaining their original plates and gilding.

These magnificent and extremely rare mirrors would be appear to be unique in the history of English furniture. By the end of the seventeenth century following the arrival of William and Mary of Orange to the thrones of England a new era of peace and prosperity in England encouraged the nobility to embrace the sophistication brought over by Daniel Marot, the King William’s ‘Clerk of the Works’ whose redesigned state rooms at Hampton Court were hugely influential in setting the court fashion and eagerly embraced by the nobility. Without doubt these mirrors could only have been commissioned by a leading wealthy and sophisticated member of Court from one of the metropolitan glass makers possibly for a London house, often the forum for the display of their wealth and political power.

The technique of embellishing glass from the reverse with painted and drawn decoration backed by gold or silver foil has its roots in Ancient Rome and Damascus. The term verre églomisé was adopted in the eighteenth century following its use by Jean-Baptiste Glomy a fashionable Parisian framer. Traditionally the richly decorated slip borders incorporate foliate enriched strapwork motifs inspired by the work and engravings of Jean Berain and Daniel Marot, the two leading European designers. The borders of the traditional long narrow pier glasses of the period that incorporated verre églomisé are found in black, green and blue but the most desirable was and remains red. Perhaps the most famous and largest pair surviving still may be seen in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire.

The cartouche form of these mirrors is very unusual and is clearly inspired by Marot’s designs and maybe directly from the frontispiece of the hugely influential publication of designs in his Nouveaux Livre d’Ornements of 1703, 1713. The overall design of foliate strapwork, found in the glass borders, is repeated in the pierced apron and cresting. In contrast the classical egg and dart border echos and therefore emphasises the extremely sophisticated Vauxhall bevelled plates.

The magnificence of these mirrors cannot be fully realised until they are seen, as they would have been intended to by surrounding candlelight. The maker would have fully appreciated the effect the bevelled glass, the luminosity of the red borders and the gilded frames would have created as the shimmering light created objects of enormous richness and wonder in the sparsely lit and furnished rooms of the period. The small scale and condition is very rare and would indicate that they may have been intended for a smaller and therefore more private and exclusive room of a great house.

The importance of these mirrors is underlined within their more recent history century as the belonged to one of the greatest family of collectors of the twentieth century, the Courtaulds. Samuel Courtauld, who founded the famous Courtauld Institute, collected some of the most icon pictures of the French Impressionist and Post Impressionist whilst his other brothers collected or commissioned artists and works of art on a grand scale. Major John Courtauld, one of the famous brothers, lived in great splendour at Burton Park, Sussex which he had acquired in 1931 and it is he, advised by the leading authorities of the day, who acquired these exceptional mirrors. The mirrors passed to his only daughter, Jeanne Courtauld, who lived at Cooke’s House, an attractive property on the family estate, together with the still surviving bill of sale to her father. It is directly from her collection that these hitherto undocumented mirrors have surfaced after almost eighty years.