The vanity is an opulent piece of furniture that provides the user with the opportunity to prepare themselves for the day, reflecting on their appearance, or to use the surface as a desk for working, writing, reading, computing, or where someone might store or display important belongings, items that are cherished and special, or the objects that they use every day.

The Louis XV style we have chosen to replicate is meant to be familiar but also ostentatious, a bygone style of furniture that has been around for centuries, inhabiting many homes, encountered in second-hand stores and antique shops, but also in its finest forms found in museums and palaces. Unlike the clean functional lines of modernism, this style emphasizes a complex, almost tessellated formal language which we feel is more symbolically relevant to our busy, chaotic lives.

By utilizing laminated glass layers the viewer can see through some of the surfaces and encounter elements of transparency and reflection on others, furthering the visual complexity. The vanity and mirror are embellished with blown and hot sculpted glass, flat glass components that have been manipulated in the hotshop, flame studio, and in the kiln, as well as various sculpted pieces and parts from our studio to create a maximalist aesthetic contrasting the smooth clean lines of the laminated sheet glass for the rest of the constructed sculpture.

Our hope with this piece is to celebrate the optical and material qualities of glass, marrying beauty and light with weight and tactility. The vanity is also uncanny, creating a slight unease, as we are recreating furniture and objects that are both familiar and strange to the viewer. Similar to the virtual world, the vanity is transparent yet opaque at times, and presents a distorted or oblong view of our possessions, desires and lives.