The painting the client chose to reference is one of two on display by the St Ives based painter Roy Conn (1931 – 2018). The canvas has a dominant bright green, with blue, dark brown and dark blue in the composition. The mirror was custom made to the same dimensions as the painting, creating a visual echo through the double room. Both mirror and painting hang over a pair of French, grey-green marble fireplaces (c.1720), installed as part of the recent renovation of the property. The genesis of this unique mirror design is the hand painted Strip Mirrors.

For this commission a tray frame was made in solid oak and stained to match the oak floorboards in the room. The wood was sealed, waxed, slightly distressed and then hand polished to a soft sheen. The mirrored 4mm glass panel has smooth polished edges and appears to float within the custom mixed green coloured interior. This green was painted in artist’s acrylic and is an exact match of the green in Conn’s canvas.

There is a 15mm gap between the mirror and the edges of the frame, the frame face is 35mm wide. It has custom made, hand painted strips attached in a clockwise rotation, giving  the mirror its own sense of movement complementing the painting in the second part of the room.

As part of the consultation, a set of studies with different colour schemes was produced and finally a sample corner of the final colours and stain. Since the client used colours from Little Green both in the living room and throughout the house, the decision that colours from this range should feature on the frames facing strips. Arranged in a clockwise spiral they are –Pompeian Ash, Dock Blue, Chimney Brick, and Obsidian Green.

This site specific, unique, mirror is stamped, signed and dated on the reverse. The mirror frame, matching the size of the Roy Conn abstract painting is 1250 x 935mm. The floating mirror panel is 1152 x 833mm and is raised 12mm from the green painted back.