Winterthur Museum

In 1992, I sculpted the model for the reproduction of the Cadwalader Mirror, in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, Wilmington, DE





This magnificent 5 ft. tall Chippendale Rococo mirror was carved in the 1770's in Philadelphia, where it hung in the Cadwalader home. The goal of the project was to reproduce the mirror, so that a rubber mold could be made and reproductions cast in resin. (The original was too valuable and fragile to make a rubber mold directly.) Working at home from photographs and in two work sessions in the Winterthur Furniture Conservation Lab, I recreated the mirror piece-by-piece in clay, made plaster waste molds of the clay parts, cast the parts in plaster, and then finished and assembled it all into one mounted model. The model was presented to a curtorial committee and approved as a licensed reproduction.  

Previously, I had never paid much attention to Rococo design, but months of immersion in this mirror gave me an appreciation of this energetic and fanciful decorative style.


Click images to enlarge.

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