Rina Solid Walnut Round Wall Mirror

Details

A round mirror usually settles onto a wall like a flat disc. Rina does not. The ring stands out from the plaster far enough to lay a soft band of shadow beneath it, and through the afternoon that shadow travels while the top of the frame warms up and the underside holds its darker brown. You register the wood as something with depth before you notice what it is reflecting.

The outer edge is a true circle, drawn without a wobble anywhere along it. The opening inside is circular as well, but it does not share the same center. It rides high and to the right, which leaves a broad crescent of walnut across the lower left and pinches the band down to a slim strip at the upper right. It is a small displacement, and it is the reason the piece never looks stamped out of a machine.

Where the walnut gathers

The grain runs around the ring rather than across it, following the curve the whole way, so nothing on the frame reads as a straight line. On the inner face, where the wood slopes down toward the glass, that same grain returns as darker bands, packed closer together where the ring is thin. There is no joint to find anywhere on the circle, no seam where a wide part meets a narrow one. That is what solid stock buys you. Veneer has to be bent around a form, and on a curve this tight the pattern always gives itself away.

The glass sits back inside the ring rather than on top of it, so the walnut stands proud the whole way around and drops a shadow of its own across the top of the reflection. The frame is the object here, and the reflection is what the object happens to hold.

Konya, one order at a time

Mehmet Ali has spent more than thirty-five years working wood. He still cuts and shapes every piece himself, and the mirrors are the youngest thing to come out of a Konya workshop that has been running a good deal longer than they have.

There is no shelf of ready-made Rinas waiting somewhere for a buyer. Yours is made after your order arrives, in the size you choose, and it will carry the color and the figure of the particular boards it was cut from rather than matching these photographs exactly.

Picking a diameter

Ten sizes, all of them square, from 40 x 40 cm (15 x 15 inch) up to 150 x 150 cm (59 x 59 inch). What changes as they grow is how loudly the off-center opening speaks. At 40 x 40 cm it reads as a gentle thickening low on the frame; by 120 x 120 cm the crescent has become a broad face of wood in its own right. Over a low bench, the way it hangs in these photographs, something from the middle of the range leaves the wall room to breathe.

Rina also has no top and no bottom the way a shaped mirror does. The circle looks the same whichever way around it goes, and only the crescent tells you where it has come to rest.

Packing, and living with it

Pieces from the workshop have found their way to around twenty countries so far. Each one is wrapped in protective material and sent worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the walnut away from damp, and a dry soft cloth is the whole of the upkeep. If you are caught between two sizes, write to us before you order rather than guessing at it.

The circle is one of ten outlines in the walnut wall mirror range. Elin is the same unbroken line drawn out into an egg, deepest through the top arc and thinning to a strip at the narrow end, and Varen keeps a curved opening but builds a rounded triangle around it.