A Guide to the Best of Southern California : 14 HANDMADE : Seven Years of Good Luck
- Share via
MIRRORED GLASS, shaped and designed to suit your wildest fantasy--whether it’s in the outlines of Marilyn Monroe holding down her billowing skirts or a geisha in full costume--can now grace your walls. Betty Prompatima cuts such mirrors to order.
From any simple photograph, Prompatima will fashion a pattern, after which she cuts and polishes the mirrored pieces before putting them together.
Her style generally consists of gluing shapes onto a background--either another mirror or particleboard cut to the same size and painted black. Mirror on mirror is generally more pleasing, Prompatima advises, but particleboard--which her husband, Roy, cuts and paints for her--is less expensive.
In piecing together pictures, Prompatima borrows techniques from the creation of stained-glass works, which was her craft before she made the transition to mirrors.
The most popular designs in her repertoire are the teddy bear, flamingo and woman’s wide-brimmed hat with a profile of a face. Those sell for $69 to $79 in the 28-inch size. Other designs include flowers, animals, birds and clowns. A simple, double heart sells for $12. However, an almost life-size Marilyn Monroe goes for $1,200, and a large, Oriental female figure for which the cutting stage alone requires a week of work sells for $2,200.
Prompatima is generally able to fill orders within a week and will send them C.O.D. or prepaid via the U.S. Mail--unbroken, she assures.
Betty Prompatima, Eighteen Twenty, 921 N. Percheron Drive, Walnut; (714) 598-6631.
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
