Mirror, Mirror on the Wall!

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Now, what fairytale does that come from? 

More clues here, an apple (from my own tree) and a mirror, got it now? Yes, Snow White! Remember I mentioned visiting Lohr am Main a couple of weeks ago, well it’s believed that the original Snow White came from Lohr! Maria von Erthal, born in the palace at Lohr in 1725 and here it is, with Snow White and her dwarves! 

Of  course the legend is good for tourism but there are a lot of interesting facts that do connect to the fairytale. Lohr was a centre for glassmaking and mirror manufacturing (you can see a sneak peek of the Lohrer Snow White mirror in my sketch), so the connection with the glass coffin and speaking mirror is there. The brothers Grimm who are attributed to writing the fairytale lived in Hanau, which is 50km from Lohr. The area is surrounded by forests and there are indeed seven mountains where intense mining took place; due to the small shafts in the mines, children and people of smaller stature were employed to work there. 

Maria von Erthal, an aristocrat did indeed have a stepmother and a very dodgy relationship with her and ran away. Maria von Erthals father did indeed gift the ''evil stepmother'', a huge mirror which spoke ….! Not in the way we think of it though, Lohr's mirrors were of a enviable quality and had mottos in the glass, the one in my sketch has Amour Propre written in it. 

So my sketchbook page is going to be all about Snow White and Lohr! The brothers Grimm's fairytale is a wee bit more gruesome than Disney's but fascinating to think that Snow White only lived 25km from me.