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A GEORGE II GILTWOOD MIRROR After a design by Matthias Lock (c. 1710-1769), possibly Iri...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:50,000.00 - 70,000.00 USD
A GEORGE II GILTWOOD MIRROR After a design by Matthias Lock (c. 1710-1769), possibly Iri...
A GEORGE II GILTWOOD MIRROR

After a design by Matthias Lock (c. 1710-1769), possibly Irish, circa 1745 The beveled rounded rectangular plate within a lily-of-the-valley decorated frame, surmounted by a broken scrolled rocaille cresting centered by a Poseidon mask before a crossed oar and a trident, flanked by snarling dragons with acanthus-sheathed tails, the pierced and acanthus-sheathed strapwork apron centered by a scallop shell 58 X 37 IN. (147 X 94 CM)

$50,000-70,000 Provenance Sotheby's, Hadspen House, Castel Cary, Somerset, May 29-31, 1996, lot 18.

The carved decoration of bearded masks and lily-of-the-valley on the present mirror recurs in Lock's carved mirror frames of the 1740s, including one supplied to the 1st Duke of Richmond and Gordon at Goodwood, Sussex, circa 1740 (Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed. 3 vols., London, 1955, Vol. II, p. 338, fig. 70) and in a number of other anonymous examples (Graham Child, World Mirrors, London, 1990, figs. 112-16; Geoffrey Wills, English Looking Glasses. London, 1965, p. 85, fig. 56). A console table associated with Lock carved with similar decorative elements (gadrooning above a mask flanked by dragons and C-scrolls) was formerly in the collection of Sir Robert Abdy, Bt., Newton Ferrers, Devon (sold Christie's London, April 21, 1994, lot 314; John Hobbs. London, 1995, no. 16).

The present mirror is more loosely related to another example and its matching console table designed and carved by Lock for the 2nd Earl Powlett for the Tapestry Room at Hinton House, Somerset, 1742-1744; the mirror, console and the drawing for the console are in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Desmond Fitz-Gerald, Georgian Furniture, London, 1969, no. 40; Anthony Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture. London, 1968, fig. 90).

MATTHIAS LOCK Lock is most famous for designing pieces in the Rococo style, with a fluency and grace not hitherto achieved in England. In 1740 he published A New Drawing Book of Ornaments. In 1744 he published Six Sconces. There followed Six Tables two years later, when he was living at Nottingham Corner, Castle Street, near Long Acre, London. A Book of Ornaments appeared in 1747, and in 1752, in collaboration with Henry Copland (circa 1706-1753), an engraver and designer of trade cards, Lock brought out A New Book of Ornaments, on 12 leaves, which includes side-tables, torchères, clocks, frames, pier-glasses and fireplaces, very much in the Rococo idiom but also including such chinoiserie motifs as ho-ho birds and oriental figures
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