Pier glass
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792)
Category
Mirrors
Date
1771 (designed)
Materials
Probably pine and lime, gesso, water gilding and silvered glass
Measurements
252 x 108 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 871293.2
Summary
A giltwood pier glass, one of a pair, English, designed by Robert Adam (1728-92), in 1771/2. The rectangular plate in a fluted and moulded surround entwined with an oak leaf garland. Topped by a cresting centred by a cameo beneath an anthemion between a pair of sphinxes between arabesques. The lower rail hung with a garland of husks centred by a pendant mask and flanked by bucrania.
Full description
These mirrors, along with the tables [NT 871292.1 and .2] beneath them, were designed by Robert Adam (1728-92) in 1771 (Soane Museum Adam volume 20/70). A payment of £41 was made to Joseph Perfetti (fl. 1760-77), a carver and gilder of St. Marylebone, London, on 31 March 1772 for 'table frames in the velvet room', and so it assumed that the mirrors - by an unknown maker - were probably installed at about the same time. Robert Adam was otherwise not involved in the creation of the Red Velvet Drawing Room, which pre-dated his work at Saltram, but which was re-decorated by Theresa Parker (1745-75) as a fitting pre-cursor to the Great Drawing Room (now the Saloon) and Library (now the Dining Room), which had been designed by Adam in the late 1760s. The mirrors and tables, respectively carved with a garland of leaves about the frame and legs, incorporated gilded versions of the real floral and foliate garlands with which rooms were hung when used for entertainments. The vocabulary of their carving thus signalled hospitality, as well as being fashionable neo-Classical references to the ancient world.
Provenance
Designed in 1771 and probably installed in 1771/2. In 1951 and accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of full payment of Estate Duty from the Executors of Edmund Robert Parker (1877-1951), 4th Earl of Morley and transferred to NT in 1957.
Makers and roles
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), designer
References
E. Harris, The genius of Robert Adam: his interiors (New Haven: Yale, 2001),, p. 237