A large Nelson commemorative armorial pier glass

A large Nelson commemorative armorial pier glass. This George III giltwood mirror has a rectangular glass plate below a shaped cornice with a central coat of arms for Admiral Lord Nelson (1758-1805) flanked by foliate tendrils on a painted black ground.  The sides consist of paired tied-reed columns with palm frond capitals enclosing similar black painted panels of fruiting vine tendrils rising from classical vases.  English, circa 1805.

See Wick Antiques, Britain on the High Seas: From Nelson to Churchill, pp.76-77, for a very similar giltwood mirror from a group at Merton Place, the house in Surrey which the Admiral shared with his mistress Emma, Lady Hamilton (1765-1815).  They all featured his coat of arms surmounted by a baron’s coronet within a garter and motto, Palman Qui Meruit Ferat, beneath a naval coronet, displayed on a trophy representing naval victory with palm fronds, an anchor, piles of cannon balls, a Union flag and a pair of guns.  This mirror is more likely to have been made after Lord Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, due to the black background.  The whole country went into a frenzy of mourning and there was huge demand for pieces edged in black or made from trusty heart of British oak.