A mirror is a curious object. Apart from the occasional water surface, shop-window or switched off electronic device it is the only object that offers a duplicate of ourselves and gives us an idea of what we look like. Our self-perception is mostly made up by what we perceive, feel, and think, not by what we look like while we are busy perceiving, feeling, and thinking. Oddly, while we are mostly oblivious to our exterior, others are not. A mirror, therefore, not only adds an external version to the internal version we have of ourselves, but also gives us an idea of what other people see when they look at us.

Under the name of MA.ZO, Mario Zoller—a Zurich-based industrial and graphic designer—has designed a mirror that takes these notions into account. It is called Copy, and the name itself tells us what it can do for us: show a copy of ourselves. Due to its sophisticated minimalist design everything else remains in the background: the mirror puts the mirror image and its observer in focus and refrains from demanding too much of our attention itself. However, if we turn our attention to the object, we see a beautiful mirror made of ash wood. The material around the mirror glass is reduced to two elegantly crafted wooden strips on the sides. In addition to its unobtrusive design, the mirror’s installation is straightforward: two rubber knobs under the wooden strips allow it to simply lean against a wall.

MA.ZO seeks to create objects of unambiguous shapes that present intelligent solutions to their users. In his carpenter’s workshop, he builds his own designs in small quantities.

Ordinarily, I would not recommend spending a lot of time in front of a mirror. In this case, however, I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to get an undisturbed glimpse of the visual copy of themselves.