In burr walnut. With the original bevelled rectangular glass set in a shaped and moulded mirror frame with a gilded carved inner slip. The square upright supports topped with replaced carved finials, and with brass drop handles to the holding bolts.

The box base with two convex and concave tiers of drawers: the upper tier with one long drawer and the lower tier with three short drawers, which are shaped, lined and decorated with crossbanding and boxwood, with ebony stringing. The drawers retain the original brass handles and escutcheons. The base set over a shaped apron and supported on the four original bracket feet.

Dressing table or ‘toilet’ mirrors do not appear to have been in regular use until late in the 17th century, but they were not an absolute innovation at that time. In 1601, Bess of Hardwick’s looking glass in her chamber at Chatsworth had a ‘frame to set it on’, and when Charles I’s furniture was dispersed after his execution, a standing mirror ‘set in silver gilt and embroidered with a woman with a foot’ was sold for £21.

From the beginning of the 18th century, dressing glasses were commonly mounted on box stands and manufactured in walnut. By the middle of the Century, the use of mahogany had become general in the manufacture of toilet glasses. From 1750 to 1775 the fashion for ‘powdered heads’ was at its height, and the dressing of these ‘heads’ was a most important function. The ‘coiffure’, when completed, was often allowed to remain untouched for a week or longer. At the end of the 18th century, an oblong glass was substituted in the toilet mirror for the oval and shield shapes which had been used previously, a change which can be explained by the sudden change in the method of dressing ladies’ hair. The towering structure of powdered curls was succeeded by a new fashion based upon classical precedents, as the hair was worn flat and close to the head.