One of the earliest published references to looking glasses in America dates to 1729, when James Foddy, recently arrived in New York, advertised “Looking Glass-Maker, late from London Hath brought a Parcel of very fine Pier Glasses.” The designs employed by Americans were, predictably, derived from published sources and imported glasses. The form is arguably the least understood and studied in American decorative arts. Research has not sufficiently advanced to determine regional preferences, complicating a more precise identification. These superb glasses, fashioned entirely of eastern white pine, are inconclusively attributed to America or England.

Technical notes: Gilded eastern white pine; composition (figures).

Related examples: Only a small number of looking glasses have been microscopically analyzed. Those with a similar makeup are catalogued in Montgomery 1966b, pp. 269–71, 273–74, nos. 226, 227, 231; Rodriguez Roque 1984, pp. 260–61, no. 121; Barquist, Garrett, and Ward 1992, pp. 51, 318–19, no. 178.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.