Oran Solid Oak Wall Mirror

Details

Oran reads as one long curve before you register it as a mirror. The frame comes around the left end as a wide, blunt bulb, travels out to the right, and somewhere past the middle the top edge sinks into one open hollow before lifting again to close at the far end. The bottom edge does not answer it. It holds a slower, single sweep the whole way, so the two contours stay non-parallel and the band between them swells and thins as it goes.

The dip is the shape

Stand back in a hallway and that hollow is the first thing you see. Hung over a bench, it leaves room above where a vase or a stack of magazines usually sits, then the frame flares out again over both ends of the furniture below. The band is rounded rather than flat, so a single highlight runs along its back and the inner face stays darker; walk toward it and the light slides around the curve instead of sitting still.

Oak with the flare left in

The band is at its widest at the two flared ends and at its narrowest through the upper middle, right where the dip falls. That kind of asymmetric edge has to be cut out of solid stock. Nothing here is bent around a form or built up from segments, and the outline runs the whole way around in one piece, with no seam at the ends where a laminated frame would give itself away.

The oak is pale, near honey in daylight, with a fine, low-contrast grain. From the doorway the surface reads as plain wood. Close up the lines follow the curve rather than cutting across it, which is the tell that the shape was taken out of the board and not wrapped onto one. The glass sits recessed in the frame and the inner edge rolls down to meet it, so you take in the thickness of the oak before you take in yourself.

Cut for you, not pulled from a shelf

Mehmet Ali was born in Konya and has spent more than thirty-five years working wood. He shapes every mirror himself, in a workshop that was busy for decades before it ever made one.

There is no stock waiting. Your size and your finish are settled first, then the outline is drawn onto boards and cut, so the color and the marking that arrive belong to those particular boards and not to the ones you see photographed here.

Picking a size for your wall

Nine sizes, from 60 x 28 cm (24 x 11 inch) up to 200 x 94 cm (79 x 37 inch). The proportions hold all the way up, so a small Oran is the same long, low form as a large one, and it hangs lengthwise with the long side running along the wall. A good starting point is a mirror a little shorter than the console or bench beneath it, so the flared ends stop just inside the furniture and the dip has room to read.

Packing, delivery and care

Mirrors from this workshop have gone out to around twenty countries so far. Yours is wrapped in protective material and sent worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the wood away from damp, and a soft dry cloth is all the upkeep it asks for. Torn between two sizes? Tell us the width of the wall and what stands underneath it, and we will say which one we would hang there.

Oran is one of eight in the oak wall mirror range. Calen comes nearest to it, with a shallower dip set nearer the left, and Olin goes the other way: slimmer at every size, and pinched through the middle instead of hollowed along the top.