Arel Solid Oak Wall Mirror

Details

Arel hangs the long way along the wall, and the first thing you notice is that it holds two shapes rather than one. The right end opens into a broad disc, very nearly a true circle, wide enough to stand in front of and actually use. The left end runs out into a long oval with a lower edge that lifts and settles again like water. Between them the wood rises from below and the body narrows to a slim band before opening out once more.

The outer edge is rounded over rather than cut square, so a single line of light travels the whole way around the frame and bends with every turn it takes. The glass sits back in a channel behind the wood, with a fine dark shadow where the two meet, which is why you read the oak before you read your own reflection. It stands off the wall far enough to lay a soft shadow under itself in the afternoon.

Solid oak, and where the weight is put

The band is not one width all the way around. At the circular end it is deep and generous, close to a third of that lobe in wood alone; by the time it reaches the top of the long oval it has thinned to roughly a third of that again. The frame gains and loses weight as the outline changes, and that is what keeps a piece this wide from reading as a strip bent around a sheet of glass.

The oak is pale and honey-toned, holding one steady color across the whole face. The grain is faint here, a few soft lines following the curve at the circular end and nothing that announces itself. No miter corners, no seam, no laminate line along the back edge: the contour runs continuously from one end to the other. That is what cutting from solid stock gives you. Veneer has to be wrapped around a core, and on a curve this tight, over a band this deep, it tells on itself at the turn.

Made in Konya, after the order comes in

Mehmet Ali has been shaping wood for more than thirty-five years. He makes every piece himself, start to finish. The workshop is a good deal older than the mirrors, which have only been made for the past two years.

Nothing waits on a shelf. Your Arel is cut once your order reaches the workshop, at the size you choose, so the boards it comes from will carry their own color and marking rather than matching these photographs exactly.

Nine sizes, one proportion

Nine sizes, from 50 x 29 cm (19 x 11 inch) up to 200 x 118 cm (79 x 46 inch), the largest of the oak wall mirrors. The proportion holds steady across the whole range, a little under twice as long as it is tall, so the bigger sizes never stretch the two lobes out of shape. They give you more of the same form.

Every photograph shows it hung the long way, above a bench in a hallway, and that is where a wide low piece has the run it needs. If yours is going over a console or an entryway bench, measure the furniture first: the mirror sits better within that width than beyond it. It is worth placing the circular end where you tend to stand, since that is the part you will use as a mirror.

Getting it to you

Pieces from the workshop have reached around twenty countries so far. Each is packed in protective material and sent worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the oak dry and wipe it with a soft cloth; that is the whole of it. If you are torn between two sizes, write to us before ordering and we will work it out against your wall with you.

Arel sits with seven other shapes in the oak wall mirror range, and two of them take the same two-lobe idea somewhere else. Eira pulls the middle in until only a narrow bridge of oak holds the ends together, and Nilo keeps the outline closed like a bean, letting one lobe fill almost entirely with wood.