The Aphros convex mirror uses a base wood frame designed by me. The frame is gilded with silver leaf and the face has clear spheres floating on the surface. The sides are randomly studded with clear cabochons.
The frame is 8.75 inches in diameter and is currently in my studio pending being sent to one of my showrooms.
Jewelry for walls.
The Aphros convex mirror was inspired by the Greco-Roman goddess Aphrodite/Venus whose functions encompassed love, beauty, sex, fertility and prosperity.
In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam( Aphros). In the most famous version of her myth, her birth was the consequence of a castration: The ancient god Cronus severed Uranus’ genitals and threw them behind him into the sea. The foam from his genitals gave rise to Aphrodite (hence her name, meaning “foam-arisen”), while the Erinyes (furies), and the Meliae emerged from the drops of his blood. Hesiod states that the genitals “were carried over the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew.” The girl, Aphrodite, floated ashore on a scallop shell. This iconic representation of Aphrodite as a mature “Venus rising from the sea” (Venus Anadyomene) was made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.
Thank you to the website “the Geneology of Style” for the bulk of the above.
Aphros was also the name of one of the mythological sea creatures that accompanied Aphrodite, the Ikhthyokentauroi. They had the upper bodies of men, lower fore-legs of horses and rather than having horse hind-legs, they had fish-like tails. The two Ichthyocentaurs were called Bythos (sea-depths) and Aphros (sea-foam).
Of course, the birth of Aphrodite has inspired artists throughout the ages.
Pompeii circa 79 CE
Boucher 1740
Cabanel 1875
Warhol 1984
You didn’t think I was going to put in Botticelli’s did you?
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