CONDITION REPORT
Reference: LOT 447B
Object: Obsidian mirror, attributed Victorian, c. 1887
Dimensions: 18 inches × 24 inches
Frame: Ebonised fruitwood, applied gilt beading (losses at lower left corner)
Assigned conservator: M. Sills
Date received: 04 March
Initial Assessment. The mirror surface is in exceptional condition for its apparent age. Obsidian of this quality — volcanic glass, likely Mexican in origin — was favoured by Victorian practitioners of scrying, and the provenance documentation accompanying Lot 447B lists several previous private owners whose names appear in occult society membership records of the period. The glass has not been treated with any backing material; it is natural stone throughout, which explains its near-total opacity. No cracks, chips, or surface deviations detected on first examination. The only anomaly of note is a faint patina on the lower third of the surface that does not respond to the standard dry-cloth test. Further examination recommended before any cleaning protocol is initiated.
Personal note — 04 March, evening.
I am writing this in the notebook I keep separately from my official reports. Fifteen years in conservation and I have never kept a separate notebook. I am keeping one now because I do not know how to enter what I saw this afternoon into a formal condition report without it sounding like the kind of thing that ends a career.
The mirror was delivered to Conservation Studio 3 at half two. I uncrated it alone. The light in Studio 3 comes from the north windows and from the overhead fluorescents, which give a clean, shadowless working environment. There are no atmospheric conditions that would account for visual anomaly.
When I uncrated the mirror and set it upright against the examination bench, I saw, for a fraction of a second, a figure standing slightly behind my left shoulder. It was not in the room. It was in the mirror — in the reflection — but it was standing where I was not. By the time I had turned and turned back, there was only the studio wall and the fluorescent strips and my own face looking back at me from the glass.
I put it down to low blood sugar. I ate the remainder of my lunch at my desk and went home at five.
CONDITION REPORT — continued
Date: 07 March
Treatment session: 1
Surface Examination. Conducted under raking light and UV illumination. The patina on the lower third of the mirror surface does not fluoresce under UV, which rules out the most common organic coatings. Under raking light it reveals what appears to be a very faint pattern — not engraved and not applied, but seemingly inherent in the stone itself. I have photographed this under all available light conditions. The photographs, I should note for the record, do not capture the pattern with any fidelity. What is clearly visible to the naked eye in raking light does not appear in the images. I have checked the camera calibration. The camera is functioning correctly.
Cleaning Protocol. Initiated dry cleaning of the frame only. The obsidian surface itself has not been touched. I will not begin surface treatment until I have a clearer understanding of the patina’s composition.
Personal note — 07 March, after closing.
The figure was there again today. I am now certain it is not a trick of the light.
It stands in the space my reflection occupies — not beside me, not behind me, but where I am. As though I am the reflection and it is the original. This is not a comfortable thought. It is a tall figure, or appears tall; the mirror only shows from roughly the shoulders upward at the distance I work at, and so I am reading height from proportion and posture rather than seeing the whole of it.
It does not look at me. This is the detail I keep returning to. Its gaze is directed at something slightly to the left of where my face is, as though it is looking at something in the room behind me. I have checked. There is nothing behind me. There is the bench, the UV lamp on its gooseneck stand, and the north window with its view of the courtyard and the plane tree that has not yet come into leaf.
Today I stayed late. When the fluorescents on the timer clicked off at six and the only light in the studio was the grey late-afternoon coming through the north window, the figure became more distinct. Not clearer, precisely — more present. As though light obscured it and dark revealed it.
I left before I could test that hypothesis further.
CONDITION REPORT — continued
Date: 14 March
Treatment session: 2
Frame treatment completed. The ebonised frame has been cleaned using a 1:10 solution of non-ionic detergent in deionised water applied on cotton swabs. The gilt bead losses at the lower left corner have been documented photographically and will be addressed in a subsequent treatment. The frame is stable.
Obsidian surface. No treatment initiated. I have been unable to determine the composition of the patina and am unwilling to proceed without analysis. I have submitted a small sample — taken from the very edge of the lower border, where the stone meets the rebate — for XRF analysis. Results expected within ten working days.
Note on provenance. I have reviewed the full provenance documentation. The mirror was acquired at a private sale in 1991 from the estate of a collector in Edinburgh whose name appears in records of the Society for Psychical Research. Prior to that, the trail goes cold until 1923, when it appears in the inventory of a house sale in Devon. Before 1923 there is nothing. The lot notes describe it as “an instrument of scrying, Victorian period, provenance untraced.” I do not usually read lot notes with particular attention. I am reading these ones carefully.
Personal note — 14 March, same evening.
The figure is not always the same figure.
I have been going in early, before the other conservators arrive. The studio at half seven in the morning has a particular quality of light — it comes in low from the east, through the gap between the main building and the annex, and it catches the obsidian at an angle the overhead fluorescents do not. This morning, in that early light, the figure in the mirror was not the tall one. It was shorter. It stood in the same position — in the space my reflection should occupy — but it was built differently, carried itself differently, and was looking, not at the space behind my shoulder, but directly at me.
I held very still. It held very still. We regarded each other for what I estimate was thirty seconds, though I cannot be certain; my sense of time in that room has become unreliable.
Then the east light moved, as it does when the sun clears the annex roofline, and the figure was gone, and my own reflection was back, looking rather paler than it ought to.
I made myself write the formal section of this report before I wrote this. I made myself eat breakfast. I am being methodical because methodical is what I am, and because I do not know what else to be.
I have not told anyone. There is no one to tell.
CONDITION REPORT — continued
Date: 28 March
[No treatment notation. No summary of work completed.]
The XRF results came back. The patina is iron oxide and something else the spectrometer cannot identify. The technician phoned to say he had run the sample three times and the unknown element read differently each time, which he attributed to instrument error. He is sending it to a colleague in Bristol for a second opinion.
I did not go into the studio today. I sat at my desk and wrote this and then I sat at my desk for another hour and looked at the photographs of the mirror, which show nothing unusual, and tried to decide whether I am the kind of person who sees things that are not there.
I have never been that person. I have been a conservator for fifteen years. I look at objects for a living. I look very carefully and I report exactly what I see.
I am going to go into the studio now and I am going to look at the mirror and I am going to report exactly what I see.
Personal note — 28 March, late.
There are three of them now. Or rather: I have seen three distinct figures across my sessions with this object, and tonight, for the first time, I saw two of them simultaneously. The tall one looking past my shoulder and the shorter one looking directly at me and, for a moment that I will not be able to describe with any precision, a third, very far back in the glass, at a distance that the physical dimensions of the mirror should not permit.
The room they occupy is not this studio. I can see enough of it to say that with certainty. The walls are stone. The light source is not electric. There is something on the floor that I cannot make out.
I am not going to write a formal condition report for this session. I am going to write instead that the mirror should not be sold. I do not know how to say this to the auction house. I do not know how to say it to anyone.
I have been coming in before the others arrive and leaving after they have gone. I eat my lunch at my desk. I have not had a conversation unrelated to work in three weeks. My sister called on Sunday and I let it go to voicemail.
The mirror does not frighten me. That is the thing I keep returning to, the thing that does actually frighten me: it does not frighten me. It holds my attention the way an unresolved question holds attention, the way a piece of music you cannot quite hear properly compels you to lean in.
The sale is in eleven days.
I am going to ask to be reassigned.
I am not going to ask to be reassigned.
[No further formal condition reports filed for Lot 447B. The mirror sold on 8 April for considerably above estimate. The buyer’s details are not in the file. The assigned conservator’s access badge records show she entered the building at 6:14 a.m. on the morning of the sale. There is no record of her leaving.]