During a previous visit to the Custom Pearl Inlay shop, I saw Kief working on a fancy mirror that was sitting on cardboard supported by two plastic garbage bins. I was told that the mirror was one piece of a set of five pieces that had been shipped from Asia, (I have a faint recollection of somebody saying it came from China) and that during shipment this piece had been damaged. The damage consisted of broken shell on each side of the mirror frame.

Exquisite Mirror - Click on the slideshow below for details

Inlaid Mirror Frame:

Unfortunately, simply replacing the broken shell with similar shell wasn’t possible – the right colouring and texturing of the existing shell would be pretty well impossible to match.

Kief is a real artist when it comes to inlaying. I’ve seen some of his work that is just plain stunning in its precision. With Kief’s work, the pieces fit not just well, but perfectly. I would love to add some of his designs and drawings to this site in the future, because I really think he’s got a lot of talent. His solution was to design some inlay that would replace a strip of the striped purple shell with white mother of pearl cut in a design that would fit in with the rest of the inlay on the piece.

At the time, I didn’t think to photograph the mirror frame, but thought about it and wondered if the the piece had made it’s way back to the owners, and if they were pleased with what Kief had done. I certainly would have been. On returning to the shop last Tuesday, I saw the mirror once again. It had not yet been shipped, so so this time I managed to take some pictures of it. Lots of gold mother of pearl, white mother of pearl, abalone, and other material (that I don’t immediately recognize) that fit together perfectly. The original artist did beautiful work, and Kief’s repair work fits in very well. I think it’s a gorgeous piece of art – see what you think:

Just click on an image to start the slideshow, then click on the little arrows at the bottom of the photo to scroll back and forth: