A new fashion'd head dress for young misses of three score and ten (BM J,5.101 1)

The interior of a luxuriously furnished lady's dressing-room. An old woman sits before the dressing-table, smiling at her reflection in the mirror, while two hair-dressers lift on to her head a monstrous wig, decorated with a nosegay of flowers, ribbons, large ostrich-feathers, and flanked with curls. She has a grotesque and witch-like profile, frontal baldness, and short, lank hair. She is elaborately dressed in the fashion of the day, wearing large pendent ear-rings, voluminous lace ruffles to her elbow-sleeves and a lace-trimmed apron over a much-trimmed dress. She clasps to her breast a King Charles dog. The two hair-dressers are evidently French, both are grinning; one (left) wears a toupet-wig, with a large black bag and solitaire cravat; he is about to place the front of the wig on the lady's forehead. The other (right) supports the back of the wig and is partly concealed by it; his toupet-wig has a very long pigtail queue.
The wall is hung with paper or brocade above a plain dado; a patterned carpet with a fringe covers the floor. A window on the left is festooned with a heavy fringed curtain. The dressing-table in front of the window, with an oval mirror, is elaborately draped with embroidered muslin; on it are toilet jars, &c. 8 May 1777

Mezzotint