Italian maestro Gio Ponti wore many hats. And one oft-forgotten entry on the architect’s lengthy CV was his work as art director of FontanaArte, a decorative branch of the Italian glassmaker Luigi Fontana. The brand is best known for lighting, but one design has proved a sleeper hit: a curved brass mirror that has infiltrated today’s interiors.

“It’s a keystone,” says Ponti scholar Brian Kish of the reflector’s unusual shape, which resembles some of the architect’s designs for porcelain brand Richard Ginori and his 1950s Lotus chair. “This is the Ponti method— he’s looping architectural features into design objects and abstracting them.