A circular ceramic mirror by Mithé Espelt, the French designer born in 1923 whose work occupies a distinct position within postwar French decorative arts — neither quite craft nor quite design, but something more instinctive than either. Espelt worked primarily in glazed ceramic, producing mirrors, frames, and objects whose forms drew equally from the natural world and from the decorative vocabulary of her moment. Her work was championed by the Parisian gallerist Jacques Adnet and collected quietly for decades before finding the wider recognition it deserved.

This is the Piques model, created in 1952. A dark grey ceramic disc frames a circular mirror, its surface set with fourteen raised leaf-form elements in glazed green — each slightly different in tone, ranging from pale celadon to deeper sage, outlined in gold. The inner edge of the frame is finished in crackled gold lustre. The result is both botanical and graphic, domestic and ceremonial.

A similar model is illustrated in Antoine Candau, Mithé Espelt, Le luxe discret du quotidien, Édition Odyssée, 2020, p.105.