Cheval mirror


The cheval glass is a free-standing large mirror, usually with a tilt mechanism, that provided a complete reflection from head to foot. This furniture piece was created in the late 18th century for a dressing room and went out of fashion after being replaced by the mirrored doors of wardrobes in the first half of the 20th century.

Construction

The mirror hangs between two vertical columns frequently connected by two horizontal planks in a frame-like arrangement. Each column rests on two splayed feet. The mirror features a tilt mechanism so that it can be used at different angles, and sometimes also has a height adjustment pulley with lead counterweights.
In 1803, Thomas Sheraton produced a design combined with a desk that included drawers on one side and writing surface on another.

Etymology

The cheval comes from the, "horse". Different explanations are given for the reason of its use:
  • "horse" is a name for the adjustment pulley;
  • cheval in a meaning of support framework ;
  • overall bulkiness and heavy weight;
  • large mirror size that allowed a horse to be seen in its entirety.
The association between Psyche, a woman in the Greek mythology who became a goddess, and the mirror dates back to a book by Jean de La Fontaine, Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon. La Fontaine retells the ancient Cupid and Psyche story using flowery language to describe an extravagant palace of Cupid with plenty of mirrors and fountains. In the book, Psyche takes a bath upon arrival in the palace, looks at herself in the mirror, and is washed yet again before spending a night of love with Cupid. While wandering through the palace afterwards, she stumbles upon a sculpture gallery of famous beauties whose good looks brought demise to their nations, like Helen of Troy and Armida of Damascus, and suddenly sees herself amidst them. While La Fontaine does not explain how this happened, a contemporary reader was familiar with mirrors on the walls and statues in front of these mirrors. The subsequent verse,
where Psyche watches herself in mirrors with delight, triggered the use of while referring to the full-length mirror once it was invented.

History

Manufacturing of large mirrors was generally beyond the technological abilities of the humanity prior to the 18th century, although there were possibly few very old predecessors of a full-length mirror. Seneca describes some Hostius Quadra who enjoyed performing sex acts in front of the mirror, which should have been much larger than the typical handheld mirrors of Antiquity. Story of Medusa and Perseus suggests that it was possible to use a polished shield as a large-size mirror. A bronze mirror found in the grave of Marquis of Haihun in China was 47 centimeters across.
Most researchers assume the cheval mirror to be a European invention. The European glass manufacturing breakthrough started in 1664, when Jean-Baptiste Colbert stole the secrets of mirror manufacturing from Venice, thus enabling the construction of the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. The size of individual mirrors was still small: the 17 seemingly large window-like panes in the Hall of Mirrors are in fact stitched from 357 small pieces of mirror glass. In 1687, developed a process of glass casting that enabled first truly large glass mirrors, impossible to make using the traditional glass blowing process. Martin Lister reported in 1699 seeing an 88 by 48 inches mirror with thickness of just inch. The cost of mirror production rapidly decreased: in the beginning of the 18th century a 180 by 100 centimeters mirror would fetch a princely sum of 750 British pounds, the prices had halved by the 1730s. The mirrors were still predominantly installed on the walls, mostly in order to visually expand the indoor space. In China, the period of Emperor Kangxi saw the creation of a free-standing chaping mirror-screen.
In Europe, the cheval glasses of approximately the height of the human became popular in the late 18th century, originally referred to as glass screens. In 1787, a visitor to Paris recorded the cheval mirror as a "pleasant invention", but by the 1820s-1830s this furniture item became a staple in every bourgeois' bedroom or dressing room. During the process, the mirror shape turned to oval, original harsh lines of the frame were softened, the angle adjustment mechanism was added, occasionally side mirrors were added to expand the reflected area.

Art

The birth of photography coincided with the popularity of cheval mirrors, with superficial similarity between these devices: both produced images of surrounding life on glass surfaces. It did not take long for photographers to exploit the combination of the two: many pictures of nude females next to the cheval mirrors were produced by the commercial studios in the 1850s-1860s. A creative take on the mirror and photography belongs to Lady Clementina Hawarden: the mirror is used to reflect the camera, not the subject.
In the late 19th century, The Bath of Psyche painting by Frederic Leighton became an iconic expression of the tripartite unity of feminine beauty, classical art, and large mirror. The artists pandering to the consumerist society found it easy to please customers through this combination and chose Psyche, a mortal turned into a goddess, as a representation of a woman, creating a new, commodified, image of this mythical figure in front of an eponymous mirror. Félix-Jacques Moulin became especially prolific in this field after opening a studio in Paris in 1851. Wu Hung mentions another image of this artist, a synthesis of Psyche and Narcissus, where a female kisses her reflection in the mirror that obviously represents a pond. The aestheticized images of academic art continued to exist in parallel to this exploitation, with a notable example of Berthe Morisot, who boldly used the "woman in front of a mirror" topic but replaced the voyeuristic aspect with female subjectivity.