Dressing Table
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Dressing Table |
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Known as the ‘Crocker Dressing Table’, this piece was designed by Burges for his own use in 1867. It is of mahogany, painted red, carved, stencilled and gilded, inset with bevelled mirrors, marble mosaic inlay, tinsel and shell, and ornamented with three portraits. | |
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On the back panel of the dressing table the three portraits in oils, painted by Frederick Smallfield, are of female members of the Crocker family. According to Henry Holiday, the painter of the Sleeping Beauty headboard on Burges’s bed [LINK], Burges was ‘sweet’ on Emma Crocker, but felt himself unsuited to marriage (Strange Genius, p.79). |  |
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| Other painted decorations on glass depict symmetrical pairs of deer and parrots. The unusual arrangement of the circular mirror surrounded by smaller circular and rectangular mirrors had already been used by Burges in a sideboard shown in the 1862 International Exhibition, and a mirror closer in design to Van Eyck's appears in several Burne-Jones’s depictions of Rosamund’s Bower (see Harrison and Waters colour plate.11). | ||||
| As well as the rich
mixture of materials typical of his work, Burges also drew on a very
eclectic range of stylistic sources in this piece. Similarities have been
noted between Burges’s mirror arrangement and the mirror on the wall in Van
Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 (National Gallery, London), although Van
Eyck’s mirror has paintings (scenes from the life of Christ) surrounding the
central mirror, rather than mirrors. The framework into which mirrors and
paintings are set may derive from arabic latticework designs, whilst the
finials come from a medieval armoire at Beauvais, seen in a publication by
the French architect and historian Viollet-le-Duc, from whom Burges was
happy to admit ‘we all cribbed’ (Crook, pp.299 and 325). References: Harrison, M. and Waters, B., Burne-Jones, London, 1973 & 1989 |