Tall Octagonal Multi-Faceted Mirror with Brass Garlands — French Work, Circa 1970

This exceptionally tall octagonal mirror — one hundred and twenty-four centimetres in height against forty-one centimetres in width — achieves its distinctive character through the interplay of two contrasting elements: a central mirror plate enclosed within a surround of multiple bevelled mirror facets that catch and multiply the light, and an outer framework of finely wrought brass garlands whose small linked elements add a note of jewel-like richness to the composition. The faceted mirror border creates an effect of depth and luminosity that a simple flat frame could never achieve, while the brass garlands introduce a warm metallic counterpoint of considerable decorative sophistication.

The taste for multi-faceted and mosaic mirror compositions was one of the defining decorative preoccupations of French interior design in the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on both the Hollywood Regency tradition and a renewed interest in rococo ornamental vocabulary, designers and craftsmen of the period produced a remarkable series of objects in which small mirror elements — cut, bevelled, or tinted — were assembled into larger decorative structures of great visual complexity. The use of brass garlands as an accompanying element is entirely characteristic of the era, when the metal's warm golden tone was favoured for its ability to animate and enliven assemblages of reflective surfaces.

The mirror presents in fine condition, the facets intact and the brass garlands complete and undamaged. Its imposing vertical format makes it particularly effective in a corridor, a narrow passage, or above a console table, where its reflective surfaces will animate the space with light and movement. A piece of strong period character that makes an immediate decorative statement in any setting.