We've mentioned Art Nouveau before. The name came from an interior design gallery in Paris, the Maison de l’Art Nouveau. This style uses forms that resemble stems and blossoms of plants as well as geometrical forms. The coming of Art Nouveau can be traced to two specific influences: the first was the introduction, of the Arts and Crafts movement, that was led by the English designer William Morris. Just like Art Nouveau, this movement was a reaction against the cluttered designs of Victorian-era decorative art. The second influence was the latest vogue for Japanese art, especially wood-block prints, which swept up many European artists in the 80s and 90s, such as Gustav Klimt, Emile Galle and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The Japanese wood-block prints consisted of floral and rounded forms, and “whiplash” curves, these were the elements that would eventually become Art Nouveau. Hand mirrors have a long history of use both as household accessories and as objects of decoration. For the most part, they were hand cut and beveled, then framed in an array of metals, such as German silver, brass, silver plate and sterling, some with a gold wash.
other Art Nouveau hand mirrors:
interesting mirror facts:
* Narcissus was supposedly bewitched by his own reflection in a pool of water, and magic powers are ascribed to mirrors in fairy tales
* the concepts of the soul are often associated with mirrors, which results in a wealth of superstition surrounding mirrors (for instance, breaking a mirror causes seven years of bad luck because the soul which shatters with the broken mirror regenerates every seven years)
* mirrors also have a strong connection to spirits; they are covered when some dies, because according to some superstitions, a mirror can trap the soul of the person who dies
* a broken mirror to this day is said to bring seven years of bad luck; this curse goes back thousands of years ago to the period of ancient Romans
* the first mirrors were often sheets of polished metal and were used almost exclusively by the ruling classes
* silvering—the process of coating the back of a glass sheet with melted silver—became the most popular method for making mirrors in the 1600s
* in some severe cases, the images these mirrors reflected were similar to those we'd see in a fun-house mirror today
(facts found at Encyclopedia.com and Mirror History)
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