Wooden mirror, probably 1700s
The letter that accompanied this mirror when it arrived at the Smithsonian in 1890 declared, "This looking glass came over in the May Flower." Many other artifacts have come to the museum with similar stories connecting them to one of America's founding families, but in this case curators have been unable to document the donor's claims. Stylistic evidence—particularly the mirror's shape, which is similar to that of so-called courting mirrors produced in northern Europe and imported to the colonies in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—suggests the mirror may not have arrived in New England until more than a century after the Mayflower.
See also:
Furniture and Furnishings
