Wall Mirrors - Decorative Mirrors
Floor Mirrors - Venetian Mirrors

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The Making of Mirrors

The glass mirror date back to the third century A.D. in Egypt, Gaul, Asia Minor and Germany. These mirrors were very small, however (one to three inches in diameter) and the quality of reflection was not good. For many centuries, thin, metal mirrors of steel, silver and gold were preferred until a technique was found for producing long, flat and thin glass and artisans devised a way of spreading hot metal onto glass without causing breakage. The term "mirror" referred to metal mirrors as well as to "water mirrors," crystal mirrors and mirrors of glass, while "looking glass" (or, less commonly, "seeing glass") designated a mirror made of a glass compound. By the end of the twelfth century looking glasses were revived, adopted first in Germany and Italy and gradually reaching England. A mixture of antimony and lead was heated two or three times. Molten resin was poured into the mixture, which was blown by means of a pipe into a spherical bowl with a hole in it. The bowl was shaken so that the mixture would spread around the inner wall and the leftover liquid was drained out of the opening. The bowl was then left to stand until the amalgam had cooled and hardened, when it was cut in half to make two convex mirrors. Such a mirror provided a novel way of distorting the face.

In sixteenth-century Venice the production of glass mirrors became an important industry and techniques for making them were significantly refined. The round bowls used as moulds for convex mirrors were by the middle of the century replaced by glass cylinders that could be levelled out to make flat mirrors. The reverse side of a mirror was covered with an amalgam of tin and mercury, in the production of which a sheet of tinfoil was set on top of a table. On top of the foil the glassmakers poured pure mercury and on top of that they placed a sheet of paper. Before it hardened, the glass, cut and flattened from the cylindrical mould, was lowered onto the paper. The artificers subsequently removed the piece of paper so that the glass would touch the surface of the mercury. They weighted the glass down to allow the excess mercury to seep out, leaving a thin layer which would bind itself to the tin, forming a backing. A month later a piece of metal was attached to this backing and the resulting glass mirror gave a very good reflection.