Nora Solid Walnut Wall Mirror

Details

Nora has four corners, and the rest of its outline spends its time getting away from them. The top edge dips in the middle between two raised corners, a shallow saddle. The left and right sides draw inward at about the height of your face. The bottom pulls up in a soft double curve. It is a squared shape with nothing straight left in it.

The frame is rounded over rather than flat across its face, so one line of light runs the whole way around the outer edge without a break, bending where the wood bends. Its width changes as it travels: the walnut gathers into real mass at each of the four corners and thins through the middle of every side, most of all on the left. Step to one side of the room and the thin stretches almost vanish while the corners stay solid.

The corners are the tell

Look at any of the four and there is no joint. The grain runs out of one side and into the next in one continuous piece, banded and dark across the top, lighter and calmer along the outer left curve. That only happens when the shape is cut from solid stock. A frame built up from lengths would need a seam exactly where this one is widest, and a veneered frame would have to bend its pattern around four concave sides, which is precisely where veneer stops being convincing.

The glass sits deeper than the wood, and the inner face of the frame slopes down to meet it, so the reflection reads as the floor of the object rather than its front. You register how thick the walnut is before you register yourself.

Cut after you ask for it

Mehmet Ali was born in Konya and has spent more than thirty-five years working wood. He shapes every mirror himself. The mirrors are the newest thing to come out of his workshop, and the workshop is a great deal older than they are.

Nothing is sitting on a shelf waiting. Your Nora is cut once the order reaches him, in the size and the finish you choose, and its color and figure will belong to the boards it came from rather than to these photographs.

Picking your size

Nine sizes, from 45 x 31 cm (17 x 12 inch) up to 175 x 122 cm (69 x 48 inch). Nora hangs in portrait and holds the same proportion the whole way up, so the larger ones do not stretch out, they simply claim more wall. The middle sizes settle well over a chair or a console with a little clear wall on either side, which is how the corners get to show. The largest are better left on their own.

Packing and care

Mirrors from this workshop have reached about twenty countries so far. Each one is wrapped in protective material and sent worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the walnut out of damp and dust it with a soft, dry cloth. If you are torn between two sizes, send us the measurements of your wall before you order and we will tell you which one we would hang.

Nora is the squared one among the walnut wall mirrors. Varen is the other piece built on a shape with points in it, a triangle with every corner rounded away, though it spreads sideways rather than hanging portrait. Aria stays upright like Nora but loses the corners entirely and climbs.