Square Mirror with Carved Wood Frame Decorated with Dentils, Old Polychromy, Mercury Glass, 19th Century

This mirror features a square carved wood frame punctuated on its four sides with large prominent dentils, treated as regular crenellations, with solid spandrels at the corners. The old polychromy, worn and flaked, mixes brown-red and black tones letting the wood show through, while the original mercury glass offers its characteristic foxing and silvery clouds.

This vocabulary of architectural dentils, almost brutalist in spirit before its time, evokes the popular frames and reused woods of the 19th century; the deeply patinated surface makes it an object of texture, halfway between a mirror and a wall sculpture.

Condition report: Good overall condition in its untouched state. Old polychromy heavily worn — an assumed patina that forms the identity of the object —, mercury glass foxed and oxidised, original. A mirror of character that will dialogue equally well with a rustic interior and a pared-down contemporary decor.