Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Au miroir, mon beaux miroir

dit qui ai la plus belle?

I can't choose - I think both these sunburst mirrors are very pretty. The differences are slight - the carving on the sun's rays and the borders around the glass are not the same but on first glance they almost look like a pair. Fashioned after the style of Louis XIV - France's Sun King - they gained popularity at the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. 

I am a 'gilt' junkie and permanently on the lookout for any kind of tired, or I prefer to think well loved, frame. Isn't it strange how we are always attracted to similar kinds of objects when browsing around? I always gravitate to anything with an original gilt frame - paintings, engravings and mirrors included. I like to imagine the history of the mirror, the images that were reflected, and I like to study closely the details of the engravings and place them in the interior that they would have once belonged. 

Gilding is an ancient art and involves applying a thin layer of gold leaf to a surface. The mirrors and the frames that I search for would have been gilded by hand. A wafer thin sheet of gold leaf would have been applied over a painted finish called gesso, which has an adhesive, sticky quality  - oftentimes the gesso would have been a terra cotta red colour - and the transparency of the gold leaf would allow the richness of the red to show through. As the gilding wears over time, more and more of the gesso appears - that is the patina I love, a soft slightly dull gold finish with a rosy tone.

It's that, 'I can see forever' kind of a day in Provence - the sun is shining, there isn't a cloud in the sky and the temperatures are rising. Sunbursts seemed just the thing to talk about, xv.