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Acta 1939Check dates

Spile Beach · Himarë

The mirror

A frameless sheet of glass with a wave-cut edge hangs flat against the rubble, with the stone running up to it on three sides and a plaster ledge below. Stand in front of it and it hands you the one wall you cannot otherwise see — the one you are standing against.

A large frameless mirror with a wavy scalloped edge hung flat against a rubble limestone wall above a white plaster ledge, reflecting the ceiling beams, the pendant lamp, a wall-mounted television, the bath and the corner of the bed.
As it hangs. Everything in the glass is the wrong way round.

Read it the other way round

A mirror reverses what it holds. Turn the photograph over and the reflection comes back the right way, and the wall behind the camera can be read off it.

The same photograph flipped on the vertical axis, so the room held in the mirror reads the way you would meet it walking in.12345
Flipped. Now it is the wall you walk in facing.
  1. 1The squared timber beams, running the width of the ceiling.
  2. 2The black pendant, hung low on its flex, with a warm lining inside the shade.
  3. 3The flat-screen television, on the plastered wall the camera is standing against.
  4. 4The oval bath, standing free on its plaster dais.
  5. 5The corner of the bed, a few steps from the bath.

Why it is worth the wall

The mirror gives a hard wall a soft edge, and it puts the beams back overhead when you are sitting below them.

The rest of the room →