A PAIR OF CARVED GILTWOOD MIRRORS IN GEORGE III STYLE,19TH CENTURY,the oval plates in pierced frames carved with rockwork, scrolling foliage and flowerheads, with confronting C-scroll cresting and and shell carved clasps to the aprons, 97.5cm high x 64cm wideProvenance:Almost certainly at Nymans House, West Sussex, until sold by Oliver Messel after 1960 to Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Baden Watkins for Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire. Literature:J. Lees-Milne, 'Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire - III: The Home of Mr. and Mrs. F.B. Watkins', Country Life, 12 April 1973, p. 981, fig. 4, The Morning Room. C. Castle, Oliver Messel: A Biography, London, 1986, p. 215, 'the morning-room'T. Messel, Oliver Messel: in the theatre of design, New York, 2011, p. 125, 'the morning room'These mirrors are possibly the pair referred to by Oliver Messel as from Nymans, the Messel family country seat, which he intended to sell to Frederick Baden Watkins for Flaxley Abbey: 'I've got a pair of mirrors at Nymans that would look right there' (C. Castle, Oliver Messel: A Biography, London, 1986, p. 217). They bear a white chalk inscription 'Mess' suggesting they were from the Messel collection. Baden Watkins wrote of Oliver's obsessive commission at Flaxley: 'We first of all asked Oliver to design just the drawing room and the morning room, and it went on and on after that until he left for Barbados. I daresay that if he hadn't gone, he would still be working on the house today. He had his own room and studio here and always said that he would like to retire here; but the English weather was no good for his arthritis and so he stayed in the West Indies even though he left many of his belongings here (ibid., p. 216). The mirrors were photographed by Country Life in the Morning Room at Flaxley in 1973 (J. Lees-Milne, 'Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire - III: The Home of Mr. and Mrs. F.B. Watkins', Country Life, 12 April 1973, p. 981, fig. 4).