At Long Last, A Looking Glass!

In the many years that Boy and I have owned Darlington House, we had not found something to hang over the fireplace in our drawing room.  Although I have enjoyed the asperity of the bare wall, I also looked forward to the day when we would find the proper adornment for the empty space.  In biding our time we debated the merits of hanging a painting or a mirror, and agreed that we preferred the latter.  As I have written in earlier posts, Darlington was built in the Federal era, and its drawing room is the most fully-realized neoclassical interior in the house, fitted out with moldings and carvings copied from pattern books of the day.  The ideal mirror to hang over the drawing room's fireplace requires a lightness and delicacy appropriate for the room, but not such a dainty-ness as to not be able to stand up to the classical orders employed.  While we found numerous candidates over the years, they were either the wrong size or too expensive, often carrying five figure price tags.  But we've never given up our search, hoping that we would find the perfect mirror to hang at a price we were willing to pay.

The mirror in the shop we found it, photographed by Boy on his BlackBerry

Yesterday, Boy and I spent several hours in the nearby town trolling through the antiques shops.  While doing so I found this mirror in a shop owned by pickers.  We always stop in to see what they have, as we've been successful in finding wallet-friendly things there.  When I saw the mirror I turned to Boy and said "What do you think about this for our drawing room?" and he agreed that it looked promising.  We examined it and determined that it still had its original gilding and ornaments, but likely had later (but still old) glass.  We also agreed that it required only a modest amount of restoration in order to bring it up to the snuff of the other, far more expensive mirrors we have passed on over the years.  Once we learned what they were asking for it our hearts raced, and we put it on "hold" so that we could go to our house and measure to see if it would fit.

The mirror in the back of Isaiah Cornini's truck

Photo by Reggie Darling

We sped back to Darlington and were excited to find that the mirror was, in fact, well-scaled for the space above our drawing room fireplace.  We telephoned Isaiah Cornini, the architectural historian we work with at Darlington and whose opinion we rely on in such matters, and asked him to come over to look at the mirror to see if it met with his approval.  Not only was he free to stop by Darlington that afternoon, but he agreed to pick up the mirror from the dealers and bring it to our house in the back of his pickup truck.  Huzzah!

The mirror, propped up in our front hall, awaiting hanging

Photo by Reggie Darling

As it turned out, Isaiah not only approved of the mirror but he agreed to help us hang it then and there.  Here is a photograph of our drawing room chimney breast in its unadorned state.  This is the "before" picture.

The unadorned chimney breast

Photo by Boy Fenwick

And here is the "after" picture, showing the mirror in place. We've lighted the candles in the chandelier that hangs in the room to show its reflection in the glass.

The chimney breast, with mirror

Photo by Boy Fenwick

Here is another photograph of the drawing room, taken this evening, with the candles lighted and a fire in the fireplace.  Oh, and look -- there's Pompey, too!

Photo by Boy Fenwick

So, is the mirror the perfect size for the space?  Boy and I agree that it could be better if it were slightly wider, but we also agree that we are very happy to have it at the price we paid for it.  Yes, we'll need to put some money into it, and restore it.  But even so, we will still have a mirror that we would have had to pay much more for had we found it in a shop in Manhattan, or at one of the bigger antiques shows.  In other words, after it had swum well-upstream from where we feel very fortunate to have found it.