The polishing room is the least interesting room in the workshop and produces the most visible result on the finished piece. A mirror finish takes days because it is removed in stages, each stage finer than the last, and the last hour undoes less than the first.
Why it takes days
Every stage has to be fully finished before the next begins. A scratch left by a coarse wheel is invisible under a fine one for about an hour and then appears, in a room with better light, on a hand that has been holding the piece for a year.
The house keeps a card for every piece listing the stages and the days. It is an unfashionable document and it is the reason the objects last.
