The Milton Historical Society seeks support in their initiative to conserve a treasured artifact in their collection, a gilded mirror that once belonged to Governor Hutchinson. The mirror is being restored by Susan Jackson of Harvard Art.

The following was contributed by Anthony Sammarco of the Milton Historical Society.

The Milton Historical Society is the proud curator of a large gilt mirror that once belonged to the Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780,) whose home “Unquety” was on Adams Street on Milton Hill. Made c. 1760 in Massachusetts Bay Colony, it once graced his mansion and remained there until it was donated to the historical society in 1918 by Miss Mary Rivers, a descendant of Barney Smith who had purchased the estate in the early nineteenth century.

The mirror was conserved and gilded in 1918, and because of its large size was loaned to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England,) where it was hung in their Boston headquarters, the Harrison Gray Otis House. After 1949, the Hutchinson Mirror was returned to Milton and it was hung in the World War II Reading Room at the Milton Public Library. For the next five decades, the mirror reflected an ever changing Milton, but was to be crated and stored when the library expansion took place. The board of the Milton Historical Society recently contacted Susan Jackson of Harvard Art, asking her to evaluate and prepare a detailed report on the proposed conservation of this highly important mirror. After a thorough inspection, she determined that the mirror was an American-made mirror that predated the Revolution, and as she said in her evaluation report

By the 1770s, there were lots of carvers in the colonies capable of carving this, and it looks a little oddly put together to be English (the pilaster tops with the cornucopiae in front, and the bark-covered branches below).  If you look at the frames on John Singleton Copley – Mrs. Edward Green, 1765, Boston Rococo frame, Met, NY; Thos Hollis, 1765-66, ditto, Harvard Univ. Portrait Coll.; and Jeremiah Lee, c.1770, Rococo frame by John Welch of Boston, Wadsworth Athenaeum – you will see that there were some very sophisticated frames around, with very plastic ornament.

The board of the Milton Historical Society has unanimously voted to conserve the Hutchinson Mirror in memory of Jeannette Lithgow Peverly (1914-2009,) a stalwart member of the historical society and a long time member of many Milton organizations, including the Milton Woman’s Club, the Forbes House Museum, the First Parish Church in Milton Unitarian, Fuller Village and the Milton Public Library. With generous donations from the family of Jeanette Peverly and many friends, we are well on our way to the $12,000 required to conserve and gold leaf the Hutchinson Mirror.

Would you join with the Milton Historical Society in helping to conserve the Hutchinson Mirror in memory of Jeanette Peverly? Once restored, the trustees of the Milton Public Library have graciously agreed to allow the mirror to be rehung in the Reading Room.

All contributions will be acknowledged in the society’s newsletter, and they are fully tax deductible, so please be as generous as your circumstances allow.

Contributions can be sent to:

The Milton Historical Society
Hutchinson Mirror Restoration
1370 Canton Avenue
Milton, MA 02186