the rectangular plate, the top with serpentine corners, within a C-scroll carved frame, below a bird-centred broken-arched swan-necked pediment. Many of the finest mirrors of the 18th century were made in Dublin, and shipped to England and America, a development partly as a result of taxes imposed by the British government on glass in 1745. F. Lewis Hinckley argues in Queen Anne and Georgian Looking Glasses: Old English and Early American that ‘tax conscious Americans, steered clear of London produced mirrors, when all such necessities and luxuries could be obtained... tax-free, in Dublin’. The most famous of the these craftsmen were the ‘Looking Glass Merchants, glass-grinders and glass sellers’ Francis and John Booker who had premises in Essex Bridge, Dublin, around 1750. In 1772, Francis became Lord Mayor of Dublin. His brother John, also a carver and gilder, carried on the family business until the late 1780s.