The English overmantel looking glass

The height of magnificence for English looking glasses occurred with the great awareness of fashionable European styles beginning in the 1740s. These styles bad a freedom of design dramatically different from earlier classical sources, and they became the imaginative and playful style of the rococo mixed with chinoiserie and Gothic designs.

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Of all the types of furniture, looking glasses with elaborately carved and gilded frames enclosing their precious silvered glass plates rapidly became the perfect medium for the rococo designer and carver to express their freedom and virtuosity. Surprisingly, one of the least written about and studied forms of the looking glass has been the overmantel looking glass, the most decorative and fanciful of them all. Few examples survive, and those that do have invariably been divorced from their original setting betraying little about their creators or patrons.

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Until the late seventeenth century the Venetian looking-glass makers, or specchieri, had resolutely maintained their reputation as the best in Europe. In England, glass manufacture only began to evolve after the arrival of skilled Italians led by Giacomo Verzelini (1522-1606) in 1571, who was licensed by Elizabeth I to teach English glassmakers. However, unblemished plates were very hard to come by until after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. George Villiers (1628-1687), second duke of Buckingham, established the Vauxhall Glass Works in south London about 1662. The duke, who was described as a "chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon," (1) swiftly created a near monopoly by buying up rivals' glass-making patents. By 1676 the diarist Sir John Evelyn (1620-1706) noted that the Vauxhall factory was producing "looking-glasses far larger and better than any that come from Venice." (2) Due to their high quality these plates were sometimes reused in the smaller mirrored sections of complex rococo overmantels.

The success of English glass production inevitably attracted the attention of the government, always keen to raise revenue. A direct 20 percent tax was imposed in 1695 on "Fire Glass and Looking Glass plates" until it was repealed three years later: The tax on glass was reintroduced in 1745 by the chancellor of the exchequer Henry Pelham (1696-1754), with a tax of 9s 4d levied on each hundred weight (about 112 pounds) of clear glass. (3) Despite these financial impediments, the huge wealth created by England's prosperity continued to generate commissions for lavish pier glasses, girandoles, and glass chandeliers.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century overmantel looking glasses seem to have been made in small numbers and were composed of a long thin rectangular plate often flanked by two small plates. They were hung directly above the chimneypiece, frequently with a painting hung above as seen in the Balcony Room at Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire. (4) This arrangement evolved to include both looking glass and picture in a single frame. By the 1720s and 1730s overmantel looking glasses slipped from fashion, to be replaced by a single large painting hung prominently over the chimneypiece. However, in 1744, the year in which John Vardy's book Some Designs of Mr Inigo Jones and Mr William Kent was published, the severity of Palladian forms was challenged by engravings showing the light and playful curvilinear forms of the French rococo. Matthias Lock (1710-1765), a carver and designer, was one of the earliest to introduce these theatrical forms through his New Drawing Book of Ornament (1740) and his Six Sconces (1744). He bridged the transition from the robust designs of William Kent (1684-1748) to the whimsical naturalistic fantasies of Thomas Johnson (c. 1714-c.1778) and Thomas Chippendale. Lock, Chippendale, and Johnson were principal members of the avant-garde Saint Martin's Lane Academy in London, established in 1735 by William Hogarth (1697-1764). Its members included many craftsmen and notable artists who rejected the formality of classicism, favoring Hogarth's serpentine "line of beauty" to what he called the "unnatural" straight line. (5) The energetic members of this circle gathered in the local coffeehouses such as Old Slaughters, also in Saint Martin's Lane, to discuss the work of leading French designers such as Nicolas Pineau (1684-1754) and Juste Aurele Meissonnier (1695-1750), who inspired a raft of designs and pamphlets that were eagerly imported to England. Such periodicals as the Gentleman's Magazine and the Monthly Review, which was founded in 1749, devoted considerable space to the discussion of the latest national and international taste, fueling widespread aesthetic awareness.

It may now be seen that the playfulness of the rococo, although outwardly frivolous and whimsical, may have had overtones as a political style associated with the Tory elite loosely centered around Frederick Louis (1707-1751), Prince of Wales. This theory may be given greater credence by the provenance or historical background of some of the most elaborate and best-known surviving overmantels, which seem to have been commissioned by families with strong Tory links.