The term verre églomisé derives from the name of the 18th century Parisian dealer, framer and restorer Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711-1786). The technique involves applying gold or silver leaf to the reverse of a glass plate into which designs are then engraved with subsequent applications of coloured foils and pigments providing the background colour. Reds or blacks were popular colours, and shades of blue and green were also used but rarer.  The technique existed in ancient Rome – and enjoyed a revival in France and Europe during the reign of Louis XIV. Eglomisé border glasses were often engraved with figural and arabesque motifs in the manner of Jean Bérain (1640 – 1711) and Daniel Marot  (1661 – 1752) and certainly the arrival of Marot in England in 1694 would have likely promoted this stunning decorative technique here.

An interesting historical note refers to ‘A large old fashioned Glass Sconce, in a Glass Frame, with Gold Flowers painted on the Glass Frame, and a Green Ground’ that was stolen in 1727 from the Long Acre premises of Benjamin Goodison. Goodison’s former ‘Master’ James Moore (d. 1726), in partnership with John Gumley, had provided mirrors for the Royal residences from 1707.  In 1707, the Pelletier brothers, René and Thomas (active c. 1680 -1720) are recorded as supplying a pair of eglomisé overmantel mirrors to Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu for Ditton House, Buckinghamshire. Sometimes of massive proportions, other were supplied to Penshurst Place, Hatfield House, Kedleston Hall and Chatsworth – and examples can now be viewed in Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Verre églomisé mirrors represented some of the most technically demanding and costly luxury furnishings of their day. Their manufacture required the collaboration of highly skilled glassmakers, gilders, engravers and decorators, while their inherent fragility ensured that relatively few examples have survived. As a result, they remain among the rarest expressions of decorative art from the period and known surviving examples are exceptionally scarce.