Large Horizontal Oval Mirror with Taupe Glass Surround by Fontana Arte — Italian Work, Circa 1970

This large and strikingly composed oval mirror presents the characteristic Fontana Arte formula in its most expansive horizontal register. A central clear mirror plate of generous size is encircled by a wide, flat border of opaque glass in a warm taupe tone — sandblasted or cast to achieve an even, velvety surface — with a fine dark line marking the transition between the reflective centre and its tinted surround. At one hundred and nineteen centimetres in width and sixty-five centimetres in height, the piece is conceived to be displayed horizontally, its wide format reading with particular authority above a fireplace, a console, or a low sideboard.

Fontana Arte, the Milanese glass manufacturer and design house founded in 1932, occupies a singular position in the history of Italian design. Under the direction of Gio Ponti, who was instrumental in its early years, and later through its association with designers such as Pietro Chiesa, Max Ingrand, and Luigi Caccia Dominioni, the company established a distinctive aesthetic founded on the transparency, weight, and optical properties of glass as a design material. The opaque tinted glass surround visible in this mirror — broad, smooth, and deliberate — is one of the most recognisable elements of the Fontana Arte mirror vocabulary, deploying the material qualities of glass not as a functional substrate but as an expressive design element in its own right.

The mirror presents in very fine condition, the glass surround clean and free of chips or cracks, and the mirror plate clear throughout. Supplied ready to hang horizontally. An exceptional example of Italian glass design at its post-war apogee, and a work of genuine sculptural presence that transforms any wall on which it is placed.