Convex mirrors: a collaboration with Soho Home
On platinum leaf, the pull of the Art Deco curve, and how the collaboration with Soho Home began.
Sean has been restoring antique mirrors since 1996, and learned the craft on Georgian convex mirrors from the 1820s: “pieces embellished with mythological dragons, antiques with lots of character.” That work led to a collection of his own: Art Deco-influenced rounded mirrors, gilded in platinum leaf and burnished by hand to a bespoke aged finish, no two the same.
Why convex? “While a flat mirror can bounce light around the room, a convex mirror actually brings the room to life,” he says. “The room becomes drawn into the mirror and is then pushed out again. The effect brings a different dimension to interiors.”
The collaboration grew out of proximity. One of Sean's large convex mirrors went into an interior a short drive from the studio, and Soho Home got in touch to take it further.
The finish is the signature. “We gild each mirror by hand, laying on platinum leaf, working around the frame quickly enough to complete the effect before it starts to dry,” he says. “We run over the gold with a burnisher and the pressure lifts the gold so it has a really high lustre. By then working it back you allow some of the colours to come through the gold … so that it's not flat.”
It is, deliberately, slow work: drawn and finished by hand. “I design everything by hand,” he says, “the simple way, the old way. … When you do things with your hands it's all about feel and touch.” Pieces can be taken in blue, bronze or green.