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A visit to the Metropolitan Museum can always cheer me up on just about any day of the year. I always say a little prayer to the gods that the English government has the wonderful sense to have a proper review board to determine the value of exports and that English furniture is so low on their lists that very few pieces are not allowed to leave the country. Of course, I sell more back to the U.K. than I import--in fact, I don't really import any furniture from the U.K. at all these days. No, the free for all, when the U.K. seemed not to care about exporting "treasures", happened between 1860 and 1960, as country house owners became aware of the high cost of maintenance and, after 1894, the inheritance tax which assured the mass destruction of a number of country houses. It was, for the then young country of the United States, an ideal opportunity to buy the innards, and sometimes the outsides, of these houses for re-use in the U.S.
As to my visit to the Met, I went specifically to look at a room from one of those country houses, Croome Court, that the Met has on display. Croome Court was a Robert Adam project in the 1760's and 70's, and the Met has the tapestry room from that estate, one of five (I think) that Adam designed with tapestries made at the Gobelins Manufactory in France. Is this a treasure that Britain can live without? I think so as there are other survivors in the U.K. and I don't really believe in national treasures to begin with. But I was less interested in the tapestries than I was in one of the mirrors on the wall. That is because a pair of mirrors were up for a sale in a local auction house and they are certainly by the same workshop. In essence, I had the perfect reference to compare the ones for sale with an untouched period mirror from 1770. That is what I would call convenient and is one of the reasons that the Met is such a treat for me. (I might add, the Met allows their photos to be accessed and published.) The auction has passed and I did not buy or even bid on them--they made $25,600.
The pair in the auction were enormous. Over eight and a half feet tall and a bit over four feet wide with old, but not original glass in them. On the back was written the name of the house they were last in, Cadland, a house owned by the Scottish banking family, Drummond, which was torn down in 1952. I was quite certain that the mirrors were going to be circa 1770 so it was only a matter of looking carefully at them to assess condition. I visited the Met the day prior to visiting the auction house and thank goodness! The pair in the sale were likely restored in London sometime in the 1950's to 1970's--I could tell by the clay colors under the gold--a reddish pink color. The first thing I noticed was the outermost leaf molding, flat and uncarved on the mirror at the Met, carved, incised is a better word, on the pair--the last restorer had added this detail. Undoing this is costly as you would likely have to strip the frames and add wood to re-carve the leaves properly or, far more cheaply but still costly, fill all the carving with gesso. The problems kept multiplying the more I looked at the mirrors, specifically because I knew exactly how the frames were supposed to look. I balked and walked away. A better reference than the Met, there isn't. One last thing I would like to add. I don't think the mirrors are not worth restoring, but that the time and the effort and the hauling were going to be costly. The person who bought them got a great deal--if, after they have done the restoration, they can find the right buyer. That's always the big "if".
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