Description

This toilet mirror would have formed part of a travelling toilet set, complete with brushes and combs, boxes for ribbons and lace, containers for cosmetics etc. The style of fine brass inlay into ebony and tortoise shell was popular in Paris during the period of Louis XIV though the designs varied depending on the makers and taste of the period. The metal inlays were invariably engraved with fine details but in many cases due to abrasive cleaning processes of the 18th and 19th century, these details are lost. In this mirror, much of the engraving is still present.

The provenance goes back to William Dodge James of West Dean, Sussex. A wealthy American businessman who grew up and was educated in England, running the UK side of Phelps, Dodge & Co, one of the largest metal trading businesses in the world at the time.

He purchased the West Dean estate in 1891 to provide a backdrop for his entertaining  following his marriage two years earlier to socialite Eveline Forbes. They spent much time and effort decorating the house buying in London and Paris and built up a large collection, and this mirror is first noted in the probate inventory of 1913.

Following Evelines death, their son Edward James, poet and supporter of surrealist and Dadaist artists, inherited the estate.