Liora Solid Walnut Wall Mirror

Details

Look along the outline and the top edge and the bottom edge are disagreeing the whole way across. On the left the top rides up into a soft crest while the underside tucks in beneath it. Toward the middle the two trade places: the top settles into a shallow dip just as the lower edge swells out and drops away. They are counter-curved from end to end, and that is what turns a horizontal frame into one long undulating S-curve rather than a ring of even curves.

Neither end reaches a corner. The left one comes to a narrow rounded stop, the right opens out fuller and heavier, so the shape lies on the wall like a kidney turned on its side. Hung long side across above a low bench, it takes the width of the furniture underneath without repeating its straight line.

The band is never the same width twice

Follow the frame around and the wood keeps changing section. Across the top center it draws down to a slim line. At the left end, and low through the middle, it thickens until it reads as a mass rather than a border. The inner opening does not copy the outer silhouette either, so the glass sits inside a calmer, steadier curve while the wavy edge does all the moving on the outside.

Two edges that refuse to run parallel are only possible in thick solid stock. The shape is what is left once the waste has been taken away, so nothing is bent around a form and nothing is wrapped.

The walnut itself

The color is a mid-dark brown with red under it, warmer where the light lands along the top and deeper down the shaded underside. The grain is fine and fairly sparse, running the length of the band and bending with it, with a few darker lines across the broader sections. The surface is matte, close to satin, so you get one soft highlight sliding along the rounded face as you walk past rather than a hard flash.

The glass sits back behind the front face of the wood, so the frame drops a shadow onto it at the thick end and you register the walnut first.

Cut by Mehmet Ali, after you order

Every Liora comes from one workbench. Mehmet Ali is from Konya, wood has been his trade for more than thirty-five years, and he shapes each frame himself rather than passing the work along. Mirrors are the newest thing the workshop turns out, two years of them so far, though the shop itself has been going a great deal longer.

Nothing is cut before it is asked for. Yours is shaped to the size you choose, out of the boards on hand at the time, so the color and the figure it carries will not be the ones in these photographs.

Choosing a size

Seven sizes, from 60 x 32 cm (23 x 12 inch) up to 200 x 107 cm (78 x 42 inch), with the long side running across. The form is scaled rather than redrawn, so the curve stays as tight at the largest size as at the smallest and simply takes more wall. Over a bench or a console, a mirror of this shape sits best a little narrower than the piece below it. Caught between two sizes, send us your wall width and we will tell you which one we would hang.

Getting it to you, and after

Work from the shop has reached around twenty countries. Yours is wrapped in protective material and sent with tracking wherever you are. Once it is up, keep it clear of damp and wipe the wood with a dry soft cloth; that is the whole of what it asks for.

If the counter-curve is what caught you, the other horizontal pieces in the walnut wall mirror range are worth a look. Vera takes the waist much further and ends with two unequal openings instead of one; Dara keeps a single band but cuts the reflection into three panels.