Eira Solid Oak Wall Mirror

Details

Eira travels sideways across a wall the way a slow line of water travels across sand. The left end swells into a broad, round lobe; the top edge lifts away from it in one long sweep, and by the far right the wood has risen into a second lobe, taller and shaped a little like a falling drop. Nothing on the outline ever straightens, and nothing turns a corner.

The surprise sits underneath. The lower edge drops deep below the left lobe, then swings back up through the middle until the body thins to a narrow bridge of oak holding the two ends together. Stand in front of it and the reflection is never cut in two. It narrows where the oak comes closest to meeting itself, then widens out again into each lobe. The frame is rounded over its whole face rather than cut flat, so a soft line of light runs along the profile and moves as you walk past.

The figure in the oak

This is the loudest grain in the oak range. The boards chosen for Eira carry cathedral figure, the tall nested arches that come off a flat-sawn board, and on the wide sections you can read them from across the room. The grain flow bends with the outline instead of cutting across it: long and parallel down the lower left sweep, then shifting angle where the frame turns up into the right lobe.

Veneer cannot do that. A thin sheet has to be bent to the shape, and around a curve of this depth it either interrupts the pattern at a joint or starts repeating it. On Eira there is no seam on the body and no corner join, so the figure carries through. The glass is recessed, dropped into a rebate cut in the oak, and the frame stands proud of it all the way around, so the depth of the wood registers before anything you see in it.

One workshop, one maker

Every Eira is cut and shaped by Mehmet Ali. He was born in Konya and has spent more than thirty-five years at the bench. Mirrors are a recent chapter for him, and the workshop they come out of was busy long before the first one was made.

No Eira is built before it is asked for. Yours starts after your order, in the size and the finish you choose, and the boards it comes from will bring their own tone and their own figure. Expect a relative of the mirror in these photographs rather than a copy of it.

Picking a size

Eleven sizes, from 60 x 32 cm (24 x 13 inch) up to 200 x 107 cm (79 x 42 inch). The proportion is held steady the whole way, so the larger sizes reach further along the wall without turning into a different shape. Eira stays close to twice as wide as it is tall at every step, and it hangs the long way.

Because so much of the form is in the lower edge, it wants a little open wall beneath it. In these photographs it sits above a low console, with the bridge of the frame clear of the vases on the surface. If your wall is boxed in by a door or a stair, measure the open span first and take the size under it, not the one that only just fits.

Leaving the workshop

So far these mirrors have found homes in around twenty countries. Each one is wrapped in protective packing before it goes, and it travels worldwide under a tracking number. Keep the oak away from damp and wipe it with a dry, soft cloth. If you are torn between two sizes, send us your wall measurements and we will tell you which one we would hang.

Among the oak wall mirrors, Eira is the one with the most to say in its grain; the rest of them stay quieter. Lina makes its case underneath instead, folding the band back below the glass, while Nilo shares the two-lobe outline with the figure turned right down.