Round Braided Rope Mirror by Audoux-Minet — French Work, Circa 1970

This perfectly circular rope mirror by Adrien Audoux and Frida Minet presents the round form that is among the most iconic in the Audoux-Minet mirror repertoire. The circular mirror plate is enclosed within a thick, deeply coiled border of braided natural rope — wound and packed to a depth of five centimetres — that gives the piece a sculptural solidity quite distinct from the flatter oval formats the duo also produced. The warm golden-brown of the braided cord traces the perfect circle with a satisfying evenness, and the resulting object has the quality of something at once entirely handmade and perfectly resolved: the simplest possible idea, executed with complete conviction.

Adrien Audoux and Frida Minet are the duo most closely associated with the rope mirror as a decorative form. Established in Paris in the late 1940s, their workshop drew on the traditions of maritime and rural craft to create objects of understated sophistication: rope, rattan, leather, and iron were their preferred materials, handled with a mastery that elevated the everyday to the level of genuine design. The rope mirror — in round, oval, and horse-collar formats — became their most widely reproduced and copied form, and today any authentic example from the workshop commands well-deserved attention from collectors of mid-century French design.

The mirror measures thirty-two and a half centimetres in diameter — a compact but weighty presence suitable for almost any domestic setting: a bathroom, an entrance hall, a bedroom alcove. The rope is intact and the mirror plate clear. A classic piece by one of the defining partnerships of French artisanal design.