Five Fascinating Facts About Mirrors

A mirror is a critical part of any bathroom, and its placement using appropriate fixings will often shape how the bathroom as a whole looks.

One of the first actions many people take in their day is to look at themselves in the bathroom mirror as they go through their morning routine.

Such is the importance of mirrors to our daily lives that ideas such as reflection are inspired by their function, and many unique and unusual events, superstitions and rituals revolve around them. Here are five of the most interesting facts about mirrors.

Seven Years Bad Luck?

Nobody wants to break a mirror, as the glass shards can get everywhere, it is not always easy to find a like-for-like replacement in the case of antique mirrors and the right fixtures ensure that it cannot fall from the bathroom wall in the first place.

As well as this, there is the superstition that breaking a mirror grants seven years of bad luck, but where did this superstition come from?

Like a lot of early mirror traditions, the origin lies in Ancient Greece and Rome, which is perhaps not surprising given they also created the story of Narcissus, a man who fell so deeply in love with his own reflection he turned into a flower.

The Greeks and by extension the Romans believed that reflections were a window to the soul, and damaging a mirror was seen as the epitome of disrespect, something that would lead to the wrath of the gods.

Why was it seven years specifically? According to Roman beliefs at the time, the body renewed itself entirely every seven years. Whilst this is not quite true, as different parts of the body refresh themselves at different rates, this belief is where the seven years of bad luck come from.

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

Whilst often misquoted, the Evil Queen’s famous question to the “Magic Mirror on the wall” is amongst the most famous lines in all of fiction, and has been referenced a countless number of times ever since.

However, the concept of a magic mirror that could reveal the truth about beauty was not just a fabrication of the Brothers Grimm but was based on the sparkling reputation of a mirror manufacturer in Bavaria, Germany.

There was a saying that Lohr mirrors were of such a high quality and had such a smooth surface compared to other mirrors available at that time that they could be said to “tell the truth” about how you looked without distortion or anything getting in the way.

This is why quality matters even with a modern mirror, as imperfect production techniques can lead to subtle warping of the glass which can affect perception.

A Reflection Of The Future

There are all sorts of practices that claim to see the future, one of the oldest and most popular was captromancy, where mirrors were used in an attempt to see the future.

In no small part because it is easy to do, catoptromancy was extremely popular in many ancient civilisations since Ancient Rome, where practitioners were known as specularii.

Whilst far from common today, it highlighted alongside the seven-year curse just how fascinating mirrors were before a process to make them cheaper and longer-lasting existed.

They Were Once Worth An Entire Farm

In Pre-Revolutionary France, there were some rather fascinating stories concerning the royal court, but one of the most fascinating of them all concerned the Countess who once traded an entire farm for a single mirror.

As described by the Memoirs of Louis de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon, Gilonne d’Harcourt, Countess de Fiesque desperately wanted a Venetian mirror, the only type of full-length mirror available in the world.

Using a mercury amalgam coating onto glass which was kept secret for centuries, mirrors that were up to a square metre big were possible, compared to much smaller mirrors made of reflective metal.

This made them very valuable, and given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and value is similarly based on what you believe is worthwhile, it is not entirely surprising that the Countess would pay so much.

She was rather infamously quoting in saying that she had “worked wonders” trading a “miserable” farm of wheat or corn (depending on the translation), although it is possible that this was a fabricated quote.

Animals Can Recognise Reflections As Well

Whilst we love having a mirror in our home so we have a chance to look at the face the rest of the world sees, animals can enjoy the same joy as well.

Dolphins, magpies, chimpanzees and even elephants have been reported to remember and recognise themselves in the mirror.