Duo des fleurs Lakmé

Designed for PORADA INTERNATIONAL DESIGN AWARD 2023

The concept of interweaving is the suggestion that guided the design of this mirror.

To intertwine means to link, to relate.
In nature, the tendrils of jasmine, the vine and many climbing plants seek support and rise up in search of something else, something different, that serves as support for the development of the whole plant. In the same way, in the human being, emotions develop through paths made up of entanglements. Interweaving is so much a part of the structure of our perceptual system that, when faced with interweavings in musical or artistic works, our 'feeling' gets lost in the pursuit of them. We are inevitably propelled into a growing emotional intensity that most of the time we cannot explain. As in listening to Léo Delibes' duet entitled 'Duo de Fleurs' from the opera Lakmè, from which this project takes its name.
In the mirror, when we look at ourselves, an emotional warp is created between what we think of ourselves and what comes back to us from the representation of ourselves.
The action of looking in the mirror is often the beginning of a personal communication between our idealised and perceived selves, in an endless emotional dialogue.
The mirror is one of the places where our emotions intertwine.

The project intends to recall these concepts through contemporary aesthetic lines: the mirror is supported and enclosed between two lateral, non-planar, shaped rods that cross each other like tendrils. The rods continue beyond the mirror, directing the observer's gaze upwards towards new hypothetical focal points suspended in space.
It is an artefact with characteristics of plasticity not attached to the back wall but detached from it by a specific brass support element. The two parts that make up the frame consist of a single construction element to be reproduced in two identical copies. One of the two elements, through a rotation of 180°, couples with the other composing the frame that will support the mirror. This rotation builds the plastic complexity of the artefact by virtue of the particular shape of the shaped rods, which provides for the opening outwards, at an angle of about 6°, of one of the two rod ends.

Canaletto walnut, open-pore and finished with natural wax, constitutes the material that makes up the structure. The back is closed by walnut-plated plywood on the outer side with the function of supporting the mirror but also aimed at giving solidity and body to the entire structure.
The hardware, the spacer/suspension/closing system and the lower feet are designed in polished brass.