Enormous fun can be had with mirrors if you study carefully where to place them. Walls can be pushed out to infinity, rooms given better proportions, lightbrought into dark corners, things seen in the round.

There are the mahogany cheval dressing glasses, which used to be called “psyches”. There are pier glasses, to hang upon the “pier” walls between the windows and so let you admire yourself with the light from the window full upon you. They can be finished off with a handsome console table and a large Chinese vase or one of those soft metal groups which you can buy for shillings and paint a gleaming white.

Antique Collector MagazineSmall, round, gilt, convex glasses, which reflect the whole room in miniature, were once used, it is said, to see what the servants might be doing behind your back. A typical pattern has small gilt balls round the frame, and some have candle sconces.

In an infinite variety of shapes and styles come the toilet glasses or mirrors for the dressing-table or the chest of drawers. There are the “skeleton” glasses, with straight or gracefully curved brackets and feet: these are thought originally to have been designed for use as shaving glasses. Then there are those with bases like Toilet mirror, about 184o. miniature chests, commodes or bureaux, some of them bow-fronted or serpentine in shape, like the chest or tables they stood upon. Many of these are in deal, veneered with walnut early in the eighteenth century, but later in mahogany, often lined or bordered with contrasting woods.

The observant reader will have noted the similarity of their shapes, especially of the late Georgian ovals and shields to the backs of chairs; one can use these shapes to create links and “bridges” in the same way as chairs.

I do not find these pleasant small pieces of furniture at all dear at the prices now being asked for them. Remember, too, that the state of the mirror itself is of no importance : it can be re-silvered or replaced.

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Antique Mirrors