I’ve got a commission to build a Greene and Greene style mirror for sitting over a fireplace. The Greene and Greene style is a higher end arts & crafts type of build, with some distinctive features which sets it apart from your typical blocky Stickly stye. Some of the features include a “cloud lift” which is a rounding feature on some of the horizontal pieces, and square black ebony plugs, which cover up some of the joinery used. There are other Greene and Greene features, but this is what I wanted to use with this project.
In order to get the dimensions and concept right, I wanted to provide the customer with some full-scale mock ups, so they would be able to provide me with some feedback. Its much easier for the customer to visualize with a full scale rather than a reduced scale mock up. In this case, it was made using ¼” plywood and a white fiberboard panel for the mirror.
I tried to design using the Fibonacci scale, a common design paradigm used throughout history, which makes one feature 1.618 times the other. In this case the width was close to 1.618x the height. I designed a 48”x30”, a 42”x26” and a 36”x22.25” options. I used a black magic marker to simulate the ebony plugs.
After placing each over the fireplace, the customer cancelled the 48” immediately (to tall, taking up from mantel to top of ceiling). The 36” wide one (shown below) was considered.
However, in the end, they chose to go with the 42” wide x 26” high mirror. I’ve got 2” in on each side to the stiles, and a 32” x 22-1/2” mirror. Bottom rail and stiles are 3” wide, and the top rails starts at 3” and after a series of “cloud lifts” goes up to 4” in width.
Now that the customer has approved the design, I can get on with the build. More to come!
Kevin