Three mirrors, three kinds of honesty
The first three mirrors to enter the catalogue were chosen partly for what they are and partly for what they let us explain. Between them they cover the three questions a buyer should ask of any mirror, and of any dealer: how old is it really, what has been done to it, and what is it honestly worth.
The trumeau: a period piece, described as one
The tallest of the three is a trumeau in the Louis XV taste, made in France in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The upper panel carries an oil painting of Cupid on a pedestal wreathed in roses; below it, an arched bevelled plate in gilt mouldings. It is 223 centimetres tall and was made for the pier between two windows, which is why it is narrow for its height. The paint and gilding show their age everywhere, and we have left them alone. It is priced at €790, which reflects a genuine nineteenth-century piece with ordinary wear rather than a restored one.
The pair: in the taste of, and said so
The pair of carved giltwood mirrors with ho-ho bird crestings are in the George III ‘Chippendale’ taste. They are not eighteenth-century mirrors. They are twentieth-century work in that manner, well carved, with bright and complete gilding and clear plates, and they came to us from a private collection in Lancashire by way of Dreweatts. A pair like this does the job of an eighteenth-century pair on either side of a chimney breast at a fraction of the price, and the entry says exactly that. “Style of” and “in the taste of” are not small print with us; they are the first line.
The Venetian frame: small losses, left as found
The third is a modest Venetian mirror in the rococo manner, twentieth century, carved in openwork with C-scrolls and a shell cresting, lacquered and parcel-gilt. There are minor losses to the extremities of the carving. We could have had them made good in an afternoon; we chose not to, because a buyer who sees the losses in the photograph and reads them in the entry knows precisely what is arriving, and a buyer who wants them restored can have it done to their own taste. It is priced at €180 accordingly.
That is the whole method. Say what it is. Say what has been done. Price it for what it is, not for what it resembles. Everything else in the house will be described the same way.