Sorel Solid Walnut Wall Mirror

Details

Sorel hangs long and low, and the first thing you notice is that the wood is never the same width twice. Along the upper right it runs as a thin taut line, barely deeper than the glass it holds. Follow it around to the lower left and it opens into a broad, flat-faced plane of walnut that leans in over the mirror. Light sits on that plane the way it sits on a tabletop, so one end of the piece reads bright and weighted while the other stays quiet.

The outline is one continuous shape rather than a rectangle with its corners taken off. The left end closes in a narrow rounded tip, the mass gathers as it travels right, and it finishes in a wide full curve. The upper edge lifts gently on the way across, and the lower edge drops into a long dip past the center before rising again. Nothing in the profile is square either. The frame is rounded over in section, so your hand meets a curve wherever it lands.

The shoulder that does the work

That flared lower left section is the reason Sorel looks the way it does. The band is at its slimmest along the top, and by the time it has swung down and around it has grown into a wide face of walnut that pushes inside the mirror line. It is also where the color changes: the grain opens into a lighter, honey-toned run that separates clearly from the deeper red-brown of the rim around it.

A shape like this has to be cut from solid stock. A veneered core cannot change thickness along its length, and it cannot flatten into a face and then narrow again without a joint giving it away. There is no joint here. The grain travels the length of the frame instead of cutting across it, and it carries on through the widest stretch of the shoulder without a break.

The glass sits down inside the wooden band rather than resting on top of it. The frame stands proud of the reflecting surface the whole way around, which is why from a few steps back you read the walnut first and yourself second.

One workshop, one maker

Mehmet Ali shapes every piece himself, in his workshop in Konya, where he has been working with wood for more than thirty-five years. Mirrors are the newest chapter in a shop that was busy long before them.

Nothing is built ahead of time. Your Sorel is cut once you have settled on a size, from boards picked out for that order, so the tone and the figure it carries will be its own rather than a copy of these photographs.

Which size suits your wall

Nine sizes, from 60 x 27 cm (23 x 10 inch) up to 200 x 90 cm (78 x 35 inch). The proportion holds steady across the range, so the larger sizes reach further along the wall instead of climbing up it. In these photographs Sorel hangs with its long axis running across the wall, over a bench in an entryway, which is the kind of spot where a shape this wide has room to be read. If your wall is tighter than that, or you are thinking of turning the piece the other way around, write to us before you order.

Leaving the workshop

So far the workshop has sent work to around twenty countries. Each mirror goes out wrapped in protective material and travels worldwide with a tracking number. Once it is up, keep the walnut away from damp air and wipe it with a dry, soft cloth. Whatever you clean the glass with, keep it off the wood.

Sorel hangs with the low horizontal pieces in the walnut wall mirror range. Dara runs a similar length but breaks the reflection into three panels; Liora holds a calm, steady curve on the inside while the outer edge does all the moving.