If you’re an American male who came of age during the ascendance of the original Star Wars—I was seven at the 1977 debut—chances are good that you engaged in at least one Princess Leia fantasy. And while, admittedly, these evolved a moderately salacious bent as I approached adolescence, they were originally of a rather chaste/techie nature, as in the mere desire to project a 3-D image into my living room (which is, if you’re forgetting, the form of Leia’s initial manifestation).

TV mirror. Manufactured by Séura.

If you’ve ever yearned for the power to generate a spontaneous holographic image at the touch of a button, you should definitely have a look at Séura‘s universally lauded series of television mirrors. This company by the Bay (Green Bay, WI, that is) has been achieving this most nifty of vanishing tricks for sometime now, having debuted in 2006 their collection of “vanishing” and “non-vanishing” LCD TVs that inhabit the cozy confines of the nearest wall-hung mirror. Séura’s televisions trump the space-saving achievements of your typical flat screens by a longshot. Installed in the wall behind a mirror (and that’s any mirror), these LCD HDTV displays come in the size of your choice (26 to 45 inch screens); they feature a 1920 x 1080 Sharp flat panel and they’re cable ready (most models include a card-enabled HDTV tuner).

The functional uses for the technology are several-fold—from eliminating bulky and all-too-often-unsightly entertainment units to the unusual aesthetic allure of capturing, say, Megan Fox in your bathroom mirror. And on that score, this particular installation seems eminently popular (not Megan Fox, ahem, but the bathroom TV). The advantages of a flat screen in the wc include everything from catching the latest news while stepping from the shower, to not missing that crucial play when nature calls. Yet, as Séura’s project gallery demonstrates, the TV mirrors are in no way limited to the bath: the technology begs for living room, kitchen, and bar installations, since each space demands the kind of versatility offered by a Séura TV mirror.

And the manufacturer is continuously improving their technology. The ONE, for instance, is a single-serving mirror and TV in one. Comprised of a 19 inch LCD with accompanying waterproof remote control, its ultra-slim one inch profile puts it in league with that tiny creature called an i-Pod. It also includes a built-in amplifier, PC input, and ATSC/NTSC tuner. Pretty snazzy, don’t you think? The judges at this year’s Kitchen and Bath Industry Show thought so. Their choice for the 2009 Gold Award? None other than Séura’s THE ONE… a fated accolade indeed.