EXTREMELY RARE 18TH C1720 QUEEN ANNE JAPANNED DECORATED MIRROR LOOKING GLASS
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EXTREMELY RARE 18TH C1720 QUEEN ANNE JAPANNED DECORATED MIRROR LOOKING GLASS:
$520.01
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EXTREMELY RARE 18TH C1720 QUEEN ANNE JAPANNED DECORATED MIRROR LOOKING GLASS
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Description:
WE JUST PURCHASED TWO GREAT EARLY PIECES WITH GREAT Circa 1710-1740 JAPANNED DECORATED SURFACES. THIS GREAT QUEEN ANNE MIRROR AND THE PILGRIM CENTURY BIBLE BOX WE ALSO HAVE LISTED. IT IS EXTREMELY RARE TO FIND THESE PIECES ANYMORE.
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THE PICTURES DO NOT DO THIS GREAT MIRROR JUSTICE. IT IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER IN PERSON THAN THE PHOTS SHOW.
AN EXTREMELY RARE EARLY 18TH CENTURY TWO PART QUEEN ANNE MIRROR OR LOOKING GLASS, CIRCA 1710-1740, IN GREAT OLD ORIGINAL JAPANNED AND DECORATED SURFACE WITH THE BEST OLD GRUNGY PATINA. Probably English or American, Circa 1710-1740 in walnut.
LET'S START WITH THE MIRROR. THIS IS A CLASSIC FIRST PERIOD QUEEN ANNE TWO MIRROR LOOKING GLASS FROM THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 18TH CENTURY. IT HAS THE BEST CURVED AND SCALLOPED TOP WITH ITS ORIGINAL CUT BEADED SURROUND. THE ENTIRE FRAME IS FULLY INTACT AND DAMAGE FREE. THE PRESENT BACKBOARD DATES TO THE EARLY PART OF THE 20TH CENTURY AND WAS PUT ON BY THE GRANDPARENTS OF THE COLLECTORS WE PURCHASED IT FROM. THIS MIRROR "NEVER" ORIGINALLY HAD A BACK BOARD, THE GLASS WAS HELD IN BY GLUE BLOCKS. YOU CAN STILL SEE WHERE THE ORIGINAL GLUE BLOCKS WERE. THE TWO GLASS MIRRORS ARE PERIOD BUT HAVE BEEN RE-SILVERED AND WE ARE NOT SURE IF IT IS THE ORIGINAL. THE COLLECTOR'S TOLD US IT WAS BUT WE DO NOT GUARANTEE IT. ALSO, THERE IS AN OLD SMALL CRACK IN THE LOWER LEFT SIDE OF THE TOP GLASS. THIS IS A VERY OLD CRACK AND SHOWS THE AGE OF THE GLASS.
AS FOR THE DECORATION. IT IS THE ORIGINAL QUEEN ANNE CIRCA 1720-1740 PERIOD BLACK AND GOLD JAPANNING WITH WONDERFUL OLD PATINA AND SURFACE. IT HAS GREAT DETAIL WITH A FLORAL TYPE PATTERS AND A CHECKERBOARD TOP. THE DECORATION IS INTACT. THERE IS AN OLDER 19TH CENTURY VARNISH SURFACE OVER IT ALL VERY MINOR LOSSES AS SEEN IN THE PHOTOS.
Below is an excerpt from an article that was in the "Magazine Antiques" in 2009 written by Phyllis Hunter:
Asian goods, more commonly known as East India goods, found their way to the ports of early America. As newspapers appeared in major cities in the 1720s and 1730s, advertisements increasingly reflected the availability of Indian calico, various kinds of teas, Chinese porcelain, and other luxury items “Just imported from London,” as was often noted in bold letters. One of the most striking examples of the influence of this global commerce was the production of japanned furniture during the early decades of the eighteenth century (see Figs. 1, 2). Accompanying the imported tea and textiles flowing into London through the East India Company and private traders, lacquered furniture and small boxes excited the admiration of English and European audiences from the mid-1600s on.
A lacquered and gilded finish could take months to complete, making these items rare in the places where they were made—Japan, China, India, and Southeast Asia. To add to the allure, the lacquer was derived only from the Japanese varnish tree (Rhus verniciflua), which grows only in Asia. To satisfy Western demand for the glowing objects that usually featured Chinese motifs of flowers, figures, or landscapes on a highly polished background of ebony or scarlet, the English developed a technique using repeated layers of varnish that approximated the Asian finish and called it japanning.3
Japanning quickly developed into a major urban craft industry in England. Encouraged by the dramatic expansion of London furniture production in the decades after the Great Fire in 1666, joiners, cabinetmakers, and furniture finishers were inspired by the examples of lacquered furniture, screens, and boxes brought to England, and the number of London japanners expanded rapidly. Drawing the ire of long-established craft guilds, such as the Company of Upholsterers, the japanners submitted a petition in 1700 for competitive relief from their tactics,4 following the example of the cane-chair makers, whose product was also based on an Asian original and required cane imported through the East India Company. In 1688 John Stalker and George Parker published a lengthy manual entitled A Treatise of Japaning and Varnishing, being a Compleat Discovery of those Arts… that inclu-ded “Above an Hundred distinct Patterns for Japan-work, in Imitation of the Indians, for Tables, Stands, Frames, Cabinets, Boxes, etc.” 5 Like most English and Americans at the time, Stalker and Parker seemed to have an imperfect understanding of Asian geography; they used the terms Japan and India (or Indian) interchangeably even though they distinguished lacquerwork done in Japan from that of China or Indonesia. The authors claimed their text would save purchasers from poor draftsmen, who “impose upon the Gentry such Stuff and Trash,” and would allow the “nobility and gentry” to obtain “whole Setts of Japan-work, whereas otherwise they were forc’t to content themselves with perhaps a Screen, a Dressing-box, or Drinking-bowl.”
These still dramatic and imposing japanned pieces with their elaborate decoration seem not to fit with our picture of early Boston—its stained-wood center-chimney houses, unpaved streets, and crowded wharfs—just emerging from the Puritan era. But by the 1720s this was a town where the well-to-do, and those who could imitate them, might sport scarlet cloaks and powdered wigs. This was the period when the wealthy merchant Andrew Faneuil (1672–1737) built his brick mansion with elegant gardens and a summerhouse like those found in the best English gardens. And future Governor Jonathan Belcher (1682–1757), son of another successful merchant, embarked on a gentleman’s tour of England and the Continent. In Germany young Belcher, like his ambitious English compatriots, waited on the family of George I (r. 1714–1727) at Hanover.6
Not only were colonials adopting a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, but their buildings were undergoing a dramatic transformation as well. Houses of the middling sort and gentry, like Faneuil’s, were enlarged to include a parlor for polite gatherings. The bedstead, a feature of the best room in most seventeenth-century houses, was banished to an upper chamber, and those who could added another bay to their single width houses. On spying a neighbor’s improvements early in the century, the Boston merchant Thomas Banister (1683–1716) wrote to his agent in London that “some curious clear glass” was the “newest Fashion” in town, and of course he wanted some for his own abode.7 Together with larger rooms and high ceilings, such sash windows with multiple panes of glass imported from England—all part of a Georgian attention to space and symmetry—created light-filled rooms.8
In such airier, more spacious rooms larger pieces of japanned furniture—high chests of drawers and tall-case clocks—could show to most advantage; their reflective surfaces and elaborate gilded decoration could take possession of a room and reflect luster back onto their owners. In such an Environment, it is not surprising that several japanners flourished in Boston (see Fig. 4).
As the center for American furniture manufacture until 1750, Boston had as many as a dozen japanners at work during the first half of the century. In 1714 the Englishman William Price (1684–1771), who was already an accomplished japanner, arrived in Boston and quickly joined the Anglican King’s Chapel, where the Faneuils and other affluent potential clients worshiped. At about the same time William Randall (w. c. 1715–c. 1735) opened a cab-inet- and framemaking and japanning shop near the Town House, now the Old State House, across the street from the wealthy merchant Charles Apthorp (1698–1758), who helped to finance Randall and his partner, Robert Davis (see Fig. 5). Thomas Johnston (1708–1767) developed a family business catering to Boston’s merchant elite; he and his sons Thomas Jr. (1731–c. 1776), Benjamin, and John (b. c. 1753; active 1773–1789) worked as japanners (John painted portraits as well).9
The purveyor Robert Jenkins sold “Japan’d Tea Boards and Waiters,” or trays, from his location on the north side of the Town House on King Street—Boston’s leading commercial thoroughfare, which connected the social and political center of town with the commercial wharves and warehouses at the harbor side. The colonial historian Bernard Bailyn observed that even in the late seventeenth century this cosmopolitan thoroughfare was “the exact pivot point of the primary orbit of the Atlantic trade in New England.”10 And, as evidenced by japanned furniture, tea, Chinese porcelain, and the many East India goods possessed by colonial Americans, it also represented a main point of connection to the world beyond the Atlantic.
Much less is known about japanners in other colonial cities. The Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island, owns the japanned tall-case clock shown in Figure 6, the works of which were made by William Claggett about 1728. Although the name of the talented limner who decorated it remains unknown, it is possible that Newport’s resident japanner William Gibbs (d. 1729) may have done the work. Gibbs is best known for the way he adorned the walls of his own house with elaborate panels of japanned decoration.11 In New York in 1759 Gerardus Duyckinck (1695–1746) advertised in the New-York Mercury that he had moved to a new location and was “selling as usual” British and East India goods, powders and varnishes for painting, “japanner’s colours, gums, speckles and frosts of different sorts,” and “a good assortment of pictures and looking glasses,” as well as window glass of all sizes. A skilled japanner himself, Duyckinck also offered “limning, gilding, silvering and lackering done at a reasonable price.”12 In the same year John Long offered “japann’d waiters,” and a luxurious assortment of imported fabrics and accessories from his shop on Wall Street, and in mid-July an sale in New York included “japanned and enamell’d Wares, of Bread Baskets, Waiters, Trays, and Toothpick Cases.”13 All the advertisements emphasized the fashionability of the objects offered by invoking novelty and variety and by often employing the phrase “just imported from London” to connect the objects to the broader circulation of goods that supported consumption and social class in Anglo-America. Whether made abroad or at home, smaller pieces—such as trays, boxes, and cases that were more portable and less expensive than high chests and tall-case clocks—continued to appear in the shops of colonial ports and provided a way for a growing number of people to participate in global commerce.
In rooms in Boston and throughout provincial America, the ritual of taking tea reenacted and reinforced the growth of an Anglo-American culture. But it was a culture based on a global circulation of goods, as japanned furniture attested. Tea drinking, often dispensed from specially designed tables, some of them japanned as well, gathered together goods from around the globe—tea and porcelain from China, sugar from the Caribbean, sweetmeats flavored with spices from Indonesia, all arrayed on a Turkey carpet and served to gentlemen and ladies dressed in fabrics from India and China (or English imitations of Asian textiles) and sometimes attended by a slave from Africa (see Fig. 3). The ensemble of objects might also have included Asian modeled cane chairs and have been set off by the hybrid fantasy of Chinese style wallpaper.14 Unlike their countrymen across the Atlantic, Americans did not adopt a wholehearted chinoiserie style but rather incorporated Asian inspired objects into their genteel lifestyle. They understood japanned furniture not as an exotic curiosity but as one of the many global products that signaled their participation in a transatlantic polite and commercial "
WE ARE NOT SURE IF THE MIRROR WAS JAPANNED IN ENGLAND OR HERE IN THE COLONIES. THE BOX AND MIRROR THOUGH HAVE A HISTORY OF BEING IN A MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY FROM THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY.
As stated, the condition is remarkable. The entire piece is free from restoration other than the added backboard and the re-silvering og the mirrors.
On the bottom of the backboard is an old family label with some early 20th century history.
For a nearly identical example without the japanning, see, "Furniture of Historic Deerfield", by Dean Fales, page 271.
15" wide, 11" deep and 3 3/4" high.
Typical wear associated with the age of the item.
Low starting Price and .
DUE TO THE NEW SHIPPING POLICY ON REGARDING INSURANCE I AM INCLUDING INSURANCE IN THE SHIPPING COST ON ALL ITEMS FOR OUR MUTUAL PROTECTION.
Payment:PayPal is the preferred method of payment.Shipping:We generally ship within five business days of receiving your cleared payment. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE USUALLY SHIP ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY AFTER THE SALE Please understand that we are out on the road for most of the week trying to find the items we sell. Because of the nature of our items we cannot determine the shipping until after the sale.Over sized items such as furniture can take a few extra days. Local pick up on larger items is available. If you win more than one item on the same day we will gladly combine shipping.DUE TO THE NEW SHIPPING POLICY ON REGARDING INSURANCE WE ARE INCLUDING INSURANCE IN THE SHIPPING COST ON ALL ITEMS FOR OUR MUTUAL PROTECTION.
Terms of Sale:Returns:Returns are accepted for a full merchandise credit. Please contact us within 3 days of receiving your item if you have any problems or concerns. We will gladly come to an amicable resolution if there is a problem with an item. We stand behind each of our descriptions but please remember mistakes can be made.Please contact us with any problems before leaving a negative response or low DSR Star Rating!
WHEN WE LISTED THIS MIRROR WE MADE AN ERROR IN THE SIZE. THE CORRECT SIZE SHOULD READ 17\" WIDE AND 32\" TALL
EXTREMELY RARE 18TH C1720 QUEEN ANNE JAPANNED DECORATED MIRROR LOOKING GLASS:
$520.01