The Cheval Mirror: A History From 18th-Century Dressing Rooms to Today

The cheval mirror exists because of a manufacturing breakthrough rather than a change in taste, and our 2026 history traces the form from Georgian dressing rooms to contemporary rented flats. Large plate glass became available in the later eighteenth century, allowing a mirror to reflect a whole standing figure for the first time, but a glass of that size was too heavy to hang, so it was mounted in a freestanding frame that could carry its weight and tilt on trunnions. Cheval is French for horse and describes that supporting frame, a term Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary of 1803 records in English as the horse dressing glass. Liebig's silvering process of 1835 and Victorian mechanised production moved the piece from dressing room to ordinary bedroom. Furniture in Fashion explains why the design has never needed revision, and sets out the glass heights, footprints and viewing distances that make one work....