CategoriesFurniture and Lighting
Mirror
Reflective objects from polished stone and bronze discs to silvered glass in carved, gilded and sculptural frames.
4 works · 10 related artists
About
Before glass, mirrors were polished metal. Chinese bronze mirrors of the Han and Tang dynasties had smooth reflecting faces and backs cast with dragons, flowers and cosmic diagrams. Clear glass mirrors backed with a tin-and-mercury amalgam became a speciality of Venetian glassmakers on Murano in the 16th century, and France set up a rival works in 1665 that went on to supply Versailles's Hall of Mirrors. Silvering with a chemical silver deposit, developed in the 1830s by the chemist Justus von Liebig, later made mirrors cheaper and safer to produce.
Frames carried the style of each age: carved giltwood in the Baroque, fretted mahogany in Georgian Britain, round convex mirrors topped by eagles in the Regency. In the 20th century Claude Lalanne cast frames of bronze leaves and branches. Look at the glass itself, since old plate is thin, slightly wavy and often clouded at the edges.
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