Antique Silver Dressing Table Mirror - Henry Matthews

This is a stunning Victorian antique sterling silver dressing table mirror which is hallmarked for Birmingham 1899, with the silversmiths’ mark for the redoubtable Henry Matthews. It has a heavy gauge, beautifully decorated silver mount depicting at the bottom of the frame the landscape as viewed from a large terrace of a country house. Either side of the mirror, flowers, acanthus and scrollwork rise to the central depiction in the top rail which is contained in a highly decorated raised roundel. Within the roundel a man holding a stringed instrument serenades a seated maiden in the company of a younger girl, also seated. When it came to us it was less striking with; a distinctly unstable frame, an almost detached backstand. As with many of the frames we receive the velvet was; threadbare in part, caked with proprietary silver cleaners for the remainder. The silk panel was similarly careworn and partially missing. Using our extensive experience, we have thoroughly cleaned and consolidated the frame and the silverwork, whilst seeking to retain the original bevelled mirror despite several surface scratches, some ‘mirror speckle’ and a few small mirror plate defects. We have also; replaced both the velvet and silk, attached the backstand and installed a suitable cord stand stop. Unlike most of the frames and mirrors we receive; this one had not fallen into the hands of too many Diy repairers. Consequently, despite its age, the number of holes from pins holding the mirror and silverwork in place only numbered about twenty or thirty. So, whilst there are a few vacant pin holes visible, most have been reused to secure the heavy silverwork. We have largely reused the pins we found when we received the frame, replacing broken and lost ones with pins contemporary to late Victorian frames. However, this means that the range of pins does vary from pure silver ones through to silver capped brass ones, and all types in-between. As indicated above, we have left some of the pin holes vacant where more pinning may have adversely impacted the silverwork. Moreover, as they form part of the first 120 years of the mirrors’ history, we firmly believe that flooding and/or silver soldering can potentially lead to loss of detail and the erasing of important pointers to a frames’ history, and at considerable unnecessary cost.