File:Designs for Girandoles - Historical guide page 0238.jpg

English: Designs for Girandoles from An historical guide to French interiors, furniture, decoration, woodwork & allied arts : during the last half of the seventeenth century, the whole of the eighteenth century, and the earlier part of the nineteenth.
Text given in book - "On pages 228 and 229 will be found some Girandoles by Nicholas Pineau. The frames are very elaborate, which was partly due to the rarity of glass. Although somewhat in general use in the palaces, etc., glass was still of sufficient importance to merit good surroundings. These girandoles were probably made in soft wood and gilt, and the gilding has the merit of softening down features of a design that might otherwise become obtrusive, as in these designs the grotesques, the mascarons, shells, feathers, etc. It is curious that in my "English Furniture, etc., during the 18th Century," I have shown some designs by Batty and Thomas Langley (page 67) in which the same features are represented as in these designs, the grotesques, for instance. Knowing that the Langleys only reproduced other people's designs, I have wondered where they obtained their ideas. These designs appear to give the solution. The mascaron was a head or mask placed in a central position, as over the centre of a doorway or in the centre of a pediment, etc., and was much used during this and earlier periods. It was a grotesque, sometimes laughing, sometimes merely making a grimace."