Nilo Solid Oak Wall Mirror

Details

The outline is a bean laid on its side, and it is not the same bean at both ends. On the left there is a full, high, rounded lobe with the glass opening out wide inside it. From there the body leans away and narrows, the top edge falling through one long curve, the underside dropping low and then lifting again, until the shape closes in a smaller and flatter lobe on the right. Nothing straightens along the way. There is no corner anywhere on it.

The section is rounded over rather than flat, so a single line of light runs along the back of the frame and slides as you cross the room. The oak stands well proud of the wall and lays a soft shadow behind itself, so Nilo reads as a piece of wood holding glass, not a sheet of glass with a border around it.

The end that gains weight

Follow the band from the thin upper left and it thickens as it travels, until at the right-hand end it is about twice what it started at and has become a solid mass of oak filling most of that lobe. The swelling is the whole idea of the piece. It leaves two unequal apertures, a broad one on the left and a much narrower one on the right, so the mirror is openly weighted toward one end instead of sitting evenly across the wall.

The glass is set back inside the wood, not laid over it. On the right lobe the inner face of the frame shows as a dark band around the opening, which is the depth of the oak announcing itself before your reflection does.

Honey oak that keeps quiet

The color is light honey, warm and consistent the whole way around. The figure is fine and low in contrast, thin lines that follow the curve rather than cutting across it, so from a few steps back the surface reads as one calm tone and the form does all the talking. There is no bark, no split, no raw or unworked face left anywhere: the outer edge is cut, sanded and rounded from end to end.

Run your eye along the band and you will not find a joint, a glue line or a laminate seam, and that absence is what tells you the shape came out of one thick piece. Veneered frames are built the opposite way, a thin skin bent over a shaped core, and the tight turn at the small lobe is exactly where such a skin gives itself away.

Cut after you order it

Mehmet Ali makes these himself. Born in Konya, more than thirty-five years with wood, he came to mirrors only two years ago, late in the life of a workshop that ran long before them. Nothing is stocked. Your Nilo is cut once your order reaches us, to the measurement and finish you pick, and the board it comes from brings its own honey and run of lines, so it will be a close relative of these photographs, not a copy.

Nine sizes, one proportion

They run from 60 x 33 cm (24 x 13 inch) up to 200 x 111 cm (79 x 44 inch), with seven steps in between. The proportion holds at every one, so the small sizes are not stubbier and the large ones are not stretched thin. In every photograph here it hangs with its long axis across the wall, above a low bench.

Reaching you, and living with it

Work from the shop has reached around twenty countries so far. Every piece leaves wrapped in protective material and travels worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the oak away from damp and dust it with a dry, soft cloth. If you are weighing two sizes against one wall, write to us first rather than guess.

Set Nilo beside the other oak wall mirrors and the family resemblance shows. Olin draws the same unequal bulbs but pulls a waist between them, and Sora carries its band from thick to roughly half that width in one uninterrupted taper.