When the Gayer-Anderson brothers undertook the restoration of Little Hall in the 1930s they fitted out a number of its rooms with architectural features and decorative pieces. The items were collected on their travels in Egypt and the Middle East. One such room, which they called ‘the Study’, now known as the Panelled Room, was fitted out with cupboards which housed smaller items from their collection of antiques and antiquities. The doors to the cupboards, which were always locked, and the access doors to the room, were faced with panels from Persian bridal mirror boxes. The decorative panels were also affixed to a door that gives access to a stairway to the first floor. The panels are decorated with Asian birds, scenes of domestic life, flowers and fruit. Thomas thought the room with its “cheery bright yellow woodwork and …Persian flower pieces” was one of the most complicated and successful decorative schemes undertaken within the house.
The panels of the bridal mirror boxes are probably 18th or 19th century in origin. They are of an unknown wood, rectangular in form, and painted in multicolours. They were formerly sections, as the name suggests, from decorative boxes which contained a mirror. Ironically and pertinently the reused panels on the cupboard doors probably served as the doors to the mirror boxes.
Mirror boxes came in a range of sizes and had either a single or pair of doors. The majority of the panels reused are pairs. Thomas noted that the mirror box doors were elaborately decorated on both sides. When the doors of the box were opened to reveal the mirror, the decoration of their inner face, often more elaborate than that of the outer face, was exposed. Tantalisingly, behind the painted panels affixed to the Study doors, lies the decorated inner face of the mirror box interior.
Traditionally mirrors played an important ritual role in Persian wedding ceremonies. The mirror, in its elaborately decorated box, was placed on the “Sofreh Aghd” or wedding table. It would be flanked by candelabra, symbols of light. The food laid out on the “Sofreh Aghd” would traditionally include herbs and sweet pastries and the “blessed bread”, the latter of which was adorned with virtuous texts. In addition there would be bread, cheese and salad, the essentials needed to sustain life. When the veiled bride entered the room where the wedding was being conducted, she and the groom would sit before the mirror.
At the point the bride’s veil was raised the groom would see her face, sometimes for the first time, reflected in the mirror. Today many Iranian couples maintain the past traditions of the wedding ceremony, particularly the role of the mirror.
The elaborate painted decoration on the Little Hall panels includes symbols of virtue and good fortune. The tulip, here stylised, is often seen in middle eastern culture as a symbol of feminine beauty, perfection and paradise. The Chrysanthemum is associated with the Persian pre-Islamic Zoroastrian spiritual being, Ashi Vanghuhi, a female Yazad or angel of ‘good blessings and rewards’.
Thomas observed that this room, with its reused panels from the bridal mirror boxes, “fulfilled admirably the various functions required of it”. Today the painted panels of the mirror boxes are largely seen merely as decorative items. The panels are more than this. Like all objects from the past they have a story to tell. We do not know the names of the brides whose faces were once reflected in the mirrors concealed behind the panels which now adorn the Study cupboard doors. The panels do though provide an insight into the culture and society of a land far from Little Hall. Perhaps in some small way they may enable us to appreciate the complex world in which we live.
Curator, Little Hall, July 2020