Antiques Dealer Guide - Articles
History of Mirrors
Plate glass for mirrors was first made by blowing molten glass into a bubble, extending it, and cutting off each end to form a tube. This was sliced lengthways, opened up, and rolled flat. Even with immense skill in the blowing and painstaking effort in grinding and polishing, it was extremely difficult to achieve a flat and regular surface. Towards the end of the 17th century French glassmakers developed a means of pouring molten glass onto a framed metal slab, allowing greater evenness. Curiously the English never really took to this “casting” of glass until late in 1773 when the British Cast Plate-Glass Company was formed.
The greatest innovations in mirror-making came during the last 20 years of the 17th century, when the new techniques employed by the French permitted the construction of the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, completed by Le Brun for Louis XIV in 1682.
The term “silvering” is a misnomer when describing mirrors made before the 1840s, for until then the reflective surface was created by applying an amalgam of tin and mercury. Approaching the middle of the 19th century the German chemist J. von Liebig discovered a way of applying a layer of silver to glass with the aid of chemicals
Mirrors
The greatest innovations in mirror-making came during the last 20 years of the 17th century, when the new techniques employed by the French permitted the construction of the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, completed by Le Brun for Louis XIV in 1682.
The term “silvering” is a misnomer when describing mirrors made before the 1840s, for until then the reflective surface was created by applying an amalgam of tin and mercury. Approaching the middle of the 19th century the German chemist J. von Liebig discovered a way of applying a layer of silver to glass with the aid of chemicals
Mirrors