A WILLIAM & MARY CARVED AND SILVERED WALL MIRRORCIRCA 1690 164cm high, 110cm wideProvenance: The collection of Standish Robert Vereker, 7th Viscount Gort (1888- 1975) at Hamsterley Hall, Co. DurhamInherited by The Hon. Catherine Mary 'Kate' Wass, OBE (1942-2021) upon the death of her great-uncle, the 7th Viscount Gort, in 1975Illustrated: C. Hussey, 'Hamsterley Hall, Durham: The Seat of the Hon. S.R. Vereker, M.C.', Country Life, 21 October 1939, p. 422, fig. 12. This mirror was photographed in the bedroom with the Stoke Edith bed at Hamsterley Hall in 1939 by Country Life. It is closely related to one that retains its original silver leaf over gesso gilding, dated 1660-80, bearing the arms of Gough of Old Fallings Hall, Staffordshire, probably Sir Henry Gough (1649/50-1724), now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (Museum no.: W.37-1949). The silvering would have given the mirror the appearance of solid metal. Another related mirror incorporating the arms of Fisher of Packington, Warwickshire, is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool. A further comparable mirror formerly in the Vernon collection is at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire (NT 652738). The combination of scrolled foliage and putti was a popular Restoration motif inspired by Continental ornamental prints, for example those published in Livre de Miroirs, Tables et Guéridons (1670) (P. Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland, New Haven and London, 1978, pl. 218). Putti climbing foliage was also a recurrent device in the Mortlake 'Playing Boys' tapestries, see the set, circa 1670, at Burghley House, Stamford, probably made for the 4th Earl of Essex.