Mirror

Jackie found a mirror in a charity shop and it had some nice deco features despite obviously coming off someone’s dressing table. The mirrors have sagged little off alignment and painting was imminent so I removed the mirrors.

One of the small, side ones was lined with a piece of Kemp’s Mercantile Gazette. The Smith-Premier typewriter appears to be a N0. 4 which went into production in 1901 but was largely superseded by the No. 10 which first appeared in 1908 (an American machine so this might be as late as 1910 but it shows the mirror contemporary with the house which was built in 1907). The headlines referring to coachbuilding, saddlery, and harness trades along with an ad from Eastwood’s Tannery (Derby) also lean toward a pre-WW1 date.

The mirrors cleaned up pretty well and the silvering is good. The copper paint behind the silver (the orange showing behind the KMGazette pages) is not further painted for protection but I didn’t have anything to put over it I was certain wouldn’t damage it (dissolution, oxidation, etc) so I just cut some new backing sheets out of back issues of Private Eye.

Reassembly used the original framing I could salvage and using as many shims as I could make out, supplemented with some small glazing brads.

It still needs a cable or chain to hang it, but essentially this is resting place minus about 36cm: