Mirror Mirror

In 1970, Gordon Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist, began to test how different animals would react when met with their reflections in a mirror. Chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants recognised themselves, showing a curiosity to discover parts of their bodies they couldn't normally see and check their hygiene. When marks of colour were drawn on their limbs and backs, they noticed and rubbed them off. Cats, dogs and other animals, meanwhile, responded to their reflections with surprise, fear or defence, never indicating an understanding that they were seeing themselves, not another creature.

For a while, the 'mirror self-recognition test' was lauded as a foolproof way to test animals' intelligence and self-awareness. Since then, however, Gallup's scientific peers have called into question the efficacy of this test. They suggest it relies on an oversimplification of what it means to be self-aware and is flawed in its assumption that animals will behave the same way we do around reflective surfaces.

In this criticism of Gallup's experiment is another oversimplification – that mirrors are only used by humans for self-admiration, self-critique or self-care. Indeed, mirrors often get a bad rep, being associated with vanity and narcissism. In reality, we use mirrors in thousands of inventive, clever and absurd ways. We use them to build telescopes and microscopes that extraordinarily extend our vision; to see around blind corners on dangerously curvy roads; to amuse ourselves by stretching and warping our bodies at funfairs; to start fires to warm us. They are helpful for making our small rooms bigger by creating illusions of depth and brightening dark spaces by reflecting and spreading light. You'll find them in religious rituals, illusions and disco-ball filled celebrations.

Furthermore, for millenia, artists, writers and other storytellers have used mirrors as symbols, settings or drivers of plots.¹ Mirrors also play a part in many magical and mystical happenings, being called upon to tell fortunes, reveal desires and even test whether someone is a vampire. When you stop to reflect on it (pun intended), mirrors are marvellous things, fascinatingly intertwined with our cultural, economic, philosophical and scientific histories.

Volcanoes, Death Threats and King Bling

So, how did we come to a slightly strange point in history where humans are watching other mammals look at their nooks and crannies in mirrors, and noting down the results? To answer this question we need to travel back 8000 years, to Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia (or Turkey as we know it today). Imagine it is 6200BCE and someone has just noticed a particularly jet-black rock on the ground. It shines, catching the sunlight. They bend down and pick it up, closely examining it. Suddenly, they scream, spooked by the eye that was looking at them from its smooth surface. After a time, they cautiously pocket the rock. Later clay and water is used to grind and polish it further and a plaster mix is applied to cover and protect its back.

This curious character has just transformed obsidian – a naturally occurring form of glass that is created when hot lava erupts from a volcano and cools rapidly – into the earliest example of a man-made mirror that has ever been discovered. Now, of course, we don't know for sure if this series of events is even close to what happened, or if there were mirrors before this one, but what is certain is that in the ancient graves of Çatalhöyük (considered to be one of the world's earliest cities), archaeologists have found a number of examples of hand-made mirrors.

In the intervening eight millennia humans have searched for ways to create bigger, more magnificent and, crucially, more perfectly reflective mirrors. From 4000BC onwards, mirrors were made by buffing copper, jade or other naturally occurring metals and stones in Egypt, Mexico and beyond. The emergence of glass mirrors backed with lead, silver or mercury have been found on historic sites across the world dating from the third century AD onwards. Mirrors remained small, imperfect and often convex or concave for many years.

It wasn't until the 1400s that a huge leap in mirror innovation occurred allowing large scale, flat mirrors to be manufactured consistently for the first time. Glass makers on Venice's glass-producing island Murano discovered that by pouring tin-mercury or other metals onto flattened panes of glass, they could manufacture bigger reflective surfaces. The Italian powers-that-be recognised the value of this discovery, with a mirror allegedly costing as much to purchase as building an entire naval ship. They guarded their manufacturing secrets fiercely.

“Tell anyone how to make these mirrors,” the artisan mirror-makers (who were often suffering the toxic side-effects of mercury poisoning as a result of their trade), were told “and we will kill you; Travel away from your workshops on Murano, and we’ll hold your family hostage until you return.”

These very real threats were effective in keeping mirror making techniques under wraps for a couple of centuries, driving the price and exclusivity of mirrors up. According to Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, author of the wonderfully comprehensive The Mirror: A History, in the 17th century a "Venetian mirror, framed in a rich border of silver, was worth more than a painting by Raphael: the mirror cost 8000 pounds, the painting only 3000".

However, this long-held secrecy triggered France to undertake a determined campaign to catch up. There were spies, poisonings and plenty of political drama. Finally, in around 1670, the French discovered (or perhaps bribed an Italian artisan to reveal) the mirror-making methods that their neighbours had been using all along.

To celebrate, King Louis XIV commissioned a Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors) at the Palace of Versailles. Completed in 1684, it received mixed reception. Some admired the eye-wateringly expensive decor, with its 357 mirrors creating 17 large reflective arches, others found it creepy. One wonders how a chimpanzee might react in this hall full of mirrors…

From Mirror Magic To Mass Market

Despite the knowledge of mirror-making techniques spreading after France's triumph, mirrors remained objects of luxury for many years. Expensive and dangerous to produce, they were symbols of wealth and power. Enter Justus von Liebeg, a world-famous² and sometimes infamous³ German chemist. Between 1830 and 1855 he unlocked significant improvements to a mirror-making process called silvering (aka wet deposition method). This manufacturing technique involves depositing a thin layer of liquid silver mixed with other chemicals that trigger a curing onto the backside of glass. His discovery transformed mirrors from expensive hand-made objects, to safe and more easily manufacturable goods, available to many.

Although silvering might sound simple enough on paper, it requires significant scientific-know-how and specialised ingredients. As Ella Saddington, an experimental designer, researcher and artist working in Australia today, tells me: "silvering is quite technical, involving a lot of chemistry and a fair bit of finesse". Saddington has become well-acquainted with this complex process through her stunning and almost-ethereal-looking Puddle Mirrors. She has been making them as series since 2018 in collaboration with master mirror-maker Luke Price under her studio Cordon Salon. Seven years and many mirrors later, Saddington says the process of silvering "still mystifies me, even though I now (sort of) understand the chemistry behind it".

As her series' name hints, the mirrors are made by pouring puddles of a silver solution (comprising ammonia, glucose and silver nitrate) onto a pane of glass that has been prepped with tin. The compounds oxidise, depositing an incredibly thin layer of silver onto the surface. "That's what creates the reflection," explains Saddington.

She describes the actual moment of silvering as "pure magic" because the solution is transparent when initially poured but "then over a few seconds you watch it shift – you're no longer looking through glass; you're looking into your own reflection. It's so beautiful".

The result of this process is a pool-like mark with wonderfully imperfect edges in the centre of the pane, behind which Saddington adds solid or tinted colours that stand in as a quasi frame. "The colours are a bit like an Aura," she says, "it's all a bit woo woo but I'm into that, in a good-witch kinda way."

To this day, silvering remains the predominant method for producing mirrors, although other cheaper metals such as aluminium, chromium or nickel are often substituted for silver. Rather than being poured by hand, most mirrors are now mass manufactured in factories using mechanised production lines containing automatic cleaning pads, spray guns, chemical baths and other cleverly engineered moving parts.⁴ This, along with the use of alternative pane materials including acrylic, is changing the very makeup of mirrors while driving down their prices.

You can buy one of Swedish designer Lisa Reiser's, wavy-shaped PRUNKHALLON mirrors in IKEA for as little as $19 AUD. The mirror has either a thick pink or blue border screen-printed on its surface which is not only nice to look at but, by not introducing a second material, keeps production costs low.

So, now, thanks to thousands of years of innovations, we find ourselves at a moment in time when the process of making mirror is well and truly designed and mirrors are everywhere – a common object of the people.

Put A Frame On It

Given designers no longer need to engage with the actual mirror-making part, they are, instead, free to play with form and frames. Think of Ettore Sottsass's iconic Ultrafragola mirror/lamp, for example. Designed in 1970 for Italian furniture brand Poltranova, it weighs 33kg and measures a whopping 195cm tall. Across the world today, it leans leisurely against many a-wall with its pale pink vacuum-formed plastic frame lighting up in a soft but undeniably attention-seeking glow. It is a mirror that makes an intentional statement: The objects we own should be joyful and beautiful, not merely useful. "When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism," Sotsass famously said. "It's not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting."

Mirrors, compared to other household objects, straddle the often contested line between ‘what is design?’ and ‘what is art?’ quite naturally. They are design because they are practical, helpful and purposeful objects. But they also behave like art, partly because they hang on walls alongside our art, but also because we don’t really need them to be colourful or beautifully designed for them to function, yet they so often are.

We could manage perfectly well with a mirror on the inside of a wardrobe door or the face of the bathroom cabinet, but instead we often choose inherently decorative mirrors that add something more than just reflection to our spaces.

And the choice of mirrors we have today is vast. Contemporary designers are using mirrors to make statements, to tell stories, to experiment and to preserve crafts. As an object that has very little ergonomic requirements and is relatively simple to make, the mirror and its frame offers a unique canvas on which to trial ideas and test techniques for a range of designers working across a vast number of disciplines. From designers seeking to preserve heritage or promote joy to designers inspired by fruit and old bed sheets, the following pages feature many designers who have made the mirror their muse.

Ready to Hang

In 2023, Jeffrey Renz launched a furniture and homewares brand called Ready To Hang (RTH) with a series of mirrors that have fun with frames by referencing familiar objects. For instance, the Puffer is a square mirror, enveloped by a round frame that, despite being solid, resembles the soft plumpness and matt-smoothness of a puffer jacket.

"Most mirrors lack personality," Renz laments. RTH's Jelly mirror answers this call for character. Cast from coloured translucent resin that beautifully catches the light and the eye, Renz describes it as "playful, nostalgic and a little weird".

Amelia Briggs

Amelia Briggs, a textile designer, has used mirrors to push her practice into new areas. Soft and slightly squishy, her mirrors grew from an interest in reclaimed bed sheets that she sources from thrift stores across America. "I love using sheets because of their texture, but also because of their intimate past," she says. Briggs has developed an upholstery method that allows her to create puffy shapes with the sheets. She then uses fibres and other reclaimed materials to stuff them, sealing their seams, edges and surfaces with a specially devised papier-mâché technique until the material is totally transformed, no longer recognisable as a bedsheet. When people see Briggs' mirrors their initial response is usually, "What is that made out of?" and "can I touch it?", she says.

Ward Wijnant

Ward Wijnant's Chunk mirrors begin with another unexpected domestic material: aluminium foil. By hand folding, rolling and pressing foil into moulds and then putting the moulds under extremely high pressure, the Netherlands-based designer creates intriguing and striking frames for mirrors. Their smooth-yet-tightly-wrinkled surfaces – in traditional silver and tinted hues – appear almost luminous and yet the seams at the edges of their doughnut-like frames hint at their humble material.

Gustaf Westman

To scroll through Gustaf Westman's Instagram grid, is to bathe your eyes in bold monochromes, satisfyingly smooth squiggles and chunky curves. His household objects beg not to be put in cupboards or blend into an interior scheme but to be admired individually. His mirrors are no different. His now iconic Flower Mirror, is shaped like no flower you'd actually see in nature but rather an exaggerated, simplified, cartoon-like version of one.

Studio Seitz

Studio Seitz, a furniture studio run by Kevin Seitz and Rob van Wyen, designed the Cooperage Wall Mirror to generate appreciation for the traditional Swiss craft of Alpine milk pail construction and carving which is at risk of being lost to modern manufacturing. In the Arconciel region of Switzerland where Seitz grew up, there are now only five individuals making these pails. "We wanted to think of a way that these techniques and motifs could be used on other things to help continue traditional crafts in a modern age," Seitz reflects. "If people don't adapt what they are making, these crafts are going to die out."

Their mirror's circular shape is constructed from 16 pieces of faceted ash, referencing the traditional construction of the pails. Face it straight on and it feels like looking down a shallow bucket, albeit an elegant one. On the outside of the frame are subtle but incredibly intricate carvings of traditional patterns and motifs executed by a part-time master carver part-time dairy farmer.

Bethan Laura Wood

Bethan Laura Wood, a London-based designer, describes herself as a "designer of colourful things". Since 2020, she has been producing mirrors in salad-like abstract compositions based on olives, gherkins, melons, tomatoes, kiwis and other tasty things for Milanese art gallery Nilufar and glassmakers Barbini Specchi Veneziani. "I have always been fascinated by food and its representations," she says of these lovely mirrors that collage together coloured mirror, swirls of differently shaded glass and dyed MDF.

Mirrors by Lina

Lina Shamoon's wonderfully kitschy disco mirrors have found an appreciative audience online and off. They feature hand-mosaiced mirrored tiles on bulbous frames. For Lina each mirror is "a carefully thought out and meticulously designed piece of art" and her way of spreading joy after experiencing burn out in her previous life as a software engineer.

Joyful Objects, Yes!

To more joy, Joy Valdez founded her studio Joyful Objects, Yes! in 2021, transitioning from industrial design into a craft-based practice. Based in Mexico City, many of her products are made by weaving a traditional Mexican fibre called Chuspata. "Traditionally, chuspata is used for baskets, mats, and everyday furniture in Michoacán. I wanted to take that same tradition and give it a twist – to turn something functional and familiar into something sculptural and unexpected: a mirror that celebrates craft as art," she says.

Her large, freestanding La Celebración Natural mirror, seeks to share and celebrate centuries of local design tradition and this humble material of chuspata in a new and engaging way. It takes Valdez around a week to weave the gentle waving form of the frame. "It's a slow meditative process that feels almost like a ritual," she reflects. She hopes that her mirrors "remind people that design can be playful, emotional, and deeply human. Spaces should make you smile, not just look pretty."

Humberto da Mata

For Humberto da Mata, his ORGUS mirror series is an ongoing investigation of how objects morph with every edition. "They do not follow a certain rule, it's more about how I'm feeling at the moment and about exploring solutions that I've already tried and really liked." Sometimes his mirrors are spiky, sometimes made of many round components, sometimes more abstract. They are united by their almost skin-like texture that is a result of a unique process the Brazilian designer has developed using paper pulp, kaolin (fine white clay) and automotive paint.

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¹ Think Shakespeare’s Richard III, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, Harry Potter, Shrek, The Shining, Taxi Driver and Dracula, to name just a few.

² Justus von Liebig has an impressive CV. He is considered the founder of organic chemistry (the study of living matter) and agricultural chemistry. He proved that nitrogen in soil helps plants to grow and invented some of the first artificial fertilisers, among other things.

³ He believed that chemistry could help fight malnutrition among the poor and invented a nutrition-rich beef-extract product and the first ever artificial milk for infants (both of which, incidentally, made him very wealthy). Unfortunately they proved not to be such good inventions after all, leading to malnutrition and, in some cases, death. Despite his questionable products, his vision that chemistry and health could go hand-in-hand has an impact that we still feel the benefits of today.

⁴ I strongly recommend going down a YouTube rabbit hole around how mirrors are made. There is something deeply satisfying about seeing a tidy waterfall of liquid silver falling onto a surface of glass that’s passing through it on rollers. On one side of the liquid you can see through it, on the other you see the ceiling of the factory instead.