Aden Solid Oak Full Length Mirror

Details

Aden is a full length mirror that stands on the floor and leans back into the wall, and the first thing that moves is the light along its outer edge. The frame is rounded across its face rather than flat, so a thin highlight runs the whole height of it, thickening where the wood swells and pulling tight where it narrows. Cross the room and the highlight slides along the curve with you.

Look at the outline and nothing repeats. The top edge dips gently toward the middle, then lifts into a rounded crest at the upper right, higher on that side than on the other. Both long sides move in and out on their own rhythm, drawing together near mid-height into a clear waist and opening out again below it. The base is the widest part of the piece, almost level where it meets the floor, its corners rolled soft. Aden is asymmetric in a way you notice slowly rather than all at once.

Honey-amber oak, right through the section

The oak is even-toned from the crest down to the base, a warm honey-amber with no dark streaking and no knots, and it holds steady through the thick stretches and the thin ones alike. The body is one continuous piece: no corner joint, no seam where a curve starts, nothing that reads as parts brought together. A shape that moves like this can only be taken out of solid stock. It is oak the whole way in, not a veneer wrapped over board.

The inner edge is beveled. It slopes down and back to meet the glass, so the mirror sits recessed inside the wood instead of resting on the front of it. Stand close and you read the depth of the oak before you read your own reflection. At the bottom that bevel widens into a shallow sill, which is where the frame does its real work, carrying the glass and carrying itself down to the floor.

Cut in Konya, after you ask for it

Mehmet Ali has spent more than thirty-five years with wood. Konya is where he was born and where he still works; the mirrors are only two years old as a line, while the workshop around them goes back a great deal further, and he cuts and finishes each one without handing it off.

Nothing is sitting on a shelf waiting to be picked. Aden is cut once your order reaches us, in the size and the finish you choose, so the boards it comes from will bring their own tone and their own small departures from these photographs.

Nine heights, one silhouette

Aden runs from 75 x 29 cm (30 x 11 inch) up to 225 x 89 cm (89 x 35 inch), in nine sizes. The proportion is held the whole way up, so every height stays tall and narrow instead of spreading along the wall. The taller sizes give a head-to-foot reflection with the crest sitting well above eye level. The shorter ones ask for very little floor and slip neatly into a gap between a sofa and a window.

Packed, sent, kept well

Pieces have gone out to roughly twenty countries so far. Each one leaves wrapped in protective materials and travels with a tracking number, wherever it is headed. Once it is with you, keep it clear of damp and give the oak an occasional pass with a dry soft cloth. If two of the heights look equally right for your wall, send us a message first, a short exchange settles it better than a hopeful guess.

If the asymmetry is more than a wall can hold, Nira in solid white oak takes the same height and the same rolling frame face with straight ends and both long edges turning at the same points. The two are shown together in the oak full length mirrors.