Mirror frame
Category
Frames
Date
1600 - 1800
Materials
Glass, Wood
Measurements
380 x 310 mm
Order this imageCollection
Cotehele, Cornwall
NT 347860
Summary
Beadwork frame, the bottom half of which is missing. Very badly broken and cut about - see provenance.
Provenance
recorded in 1924 and in 1894 respectively- 'Beside the bed hangs a piece of beadwork in a frame surrounding a mirror of about 1625. In it are contained two embroidered figures, fellows to those on the late fifteenth-century altar cloth in the chapel. the arms of Durnford and Edgcumbe are worked at the bottom in a style like those on the Dorney needlework which was illustrated a month ago'. - Christopher Hussey describing the WHITE ROOM, Country Life 1924. 'For one of these mirrors was once all covered with animals done in flat bead-work; but the lower half of the pattern came to pieces, and then some gentle but misguided dame, casting about for employment, covered the dilapidated part with velvet; and instead of herself working some objects to relieve it, laid sacrilegious hands upon the altar cloth (a royal antiquary suggests bier-cloth) and calmly transferred two figures of saints from it to the mirror - forming, along with the Durnford arms, the most incongruous mixture it is possible to conceive'. - Rev A H Malan, describing the SOUTH ROOM, Pall Mall magazine,1894.