Until the Thirteenth Century, mirrors were made of burnished metal. The first looking-glasses with silvered backs were merely small mirrors destined to hang on a lady's chatelaine. In the Sixteenth Century, the art of silvering the back was brought to perfection in Murano; and not long after those celebrated glass-works were in operation, the French, Germans and English all stepped into the field, and began to make looking-glasses with more or less success. The French and English, however, achieved the best results in imitating the Venetian work. About the Sixteenth Century, glasses with beveled sides (a biseau) were made in Venice and frames became of great importance.

Sometimes they were very architectural and carved in the most ornate fashion. The handsome mirror on Plate CXV., from the Cluny Museum, is Italian work of the Sixteenth Century, and exhibits in its carving the fanciful ideas of the Renaissance. Here we have flowers, fruits, foliage and strange birds, as well as Cupids and other mythological figures. The two satyrs, one blowing a horn and the other a pipe, on the pediment, are finely sculptured. It is, however, all frame and very little mirror, as was the general treatment of the time. The whole frame is carved and gilt.

A French authority tells us that "In Italy they were developed in redundant foliage, supporting figures of geniuses; or crowned with a pyramidal composition on which appeared the escutcheon of the owner; others were sculptured in hard wood, such as oak, the most perfect of these works being gilded on the bare wood with a species of bright gold called ducat gold; others were coated with that white paste which is still used and gilded on a light impression of vermilion.

"A great change took place under Louis XIV; Venice and its mirrors were left far behind; and after having vainly endeavored to bring over workmen from Murano to found a manufactory of glass in the faubourg St. Antoine, Colbert learned that one already existed in regular working order at Tourlaville near Cherbourg. The minister sent for Lucas de Nehou, the director, to take in hand the royal manufactory of glasses. Shortly after, he was able to send from it the splendid decorations of the galerie des fetes for Versailles. Thenceforth, it could no longer be a question of counterbalancing the minute dimensions of the mirror by the development of its frame; the latter, therefore, underwent a transformation, and, like the borders of wainscotings, was reduced to delicate arabesque combinations connected by wreaths of flowers, relieved by masks and palmettes, or by shells and acanthus foliage. Notwithstanding the increased dimensions of the glasses their effect was still more heightened by inlaid pieces. Thus sections of glass were ranged at each corner of the principal sheet of glass, whether oval or rectangular, then pieces to form a border, and others forming a pediment at the top, and a pendant towards the base; gilded and carved wood united them all, hiding the joints by ingenious intersections, and furnishing the architectural framework with its chief designs, its stems and wreaths, its crowned masks, requisite for consolidating the masses and giving points of attraction to the eye. These sculptures are of extreme elegance of composition and of great delicacy of workmanship."

Plate CXV - Sixteenth Century Italian Mirror - Cluny Museum

Therefore, the mirror was now seen in every home and in every room. Several, indeed, were often hung in one room. One, of course, was placed over the chimney-piece, which was adorned with a handsome clock, on either side of which stood a gilt candelabrum of several arms. These, reflected into the glass, added brilliancy to the room, and were reflected back and forth by the pier-glasses between the windows.

In the bedrooms, of course, a mirror hung over the dressing-table, or stood upon it.

Two large looking-glasses, with green ebony frames, and two other large looking-glasses appear in the inventory of a wealthy lady of the period, who also possessed a table of "calembour1 wood, which encloses a toilet of the same wood, ornamented with gold, containing two dressing-boxes and looking-glass, one pin cushion, one powder-box, and two brushes of the same."

The Duke of Buckingham started a factory in Lambeth about 1670, and sent for the best glass-makers, glass-grinders, and polishers from Venice, which, we are told, "succeeded so well as to be now enabled to send to that very place and to every other part of Europe, and to Asia, Africa and America, the finest glass of all sorts that the world can produce." In 1677 Evelyn notes of a visit to Lambeth: "We also saw the Duke of Buckingham's glassworks, where they made huge vases of metal as clear, ponderous and thick as crystal; also looking-glasses far larger and better than any that come from Venice."

The Vauxhall Plate Glass factory was in operation until 1780. Charles II. forbade the importation of any kind of glass; and this, of course, gave a strong incentive to native talent. The secrets of manufacture were guarded, but glass was made in Vauxhall in much the same manner as in Murano. The largest plates measured four feet; and when a larger mirror was required, two or more pieces of glass were used. Small mirrors were also often made in two sections. Many of these Vauxhall mirrors were exported to America.

1 Calembour, or eagle-wood, a sweet-scented species of aloes that comes from the East.

At first the frames were of ebony, olive-wood and walnut; at the end of the Seventeenth Century lacquered frames were popular and soft wood carved and gilded, or a composition of something like plaster of Paris, moulded and gilt.

About the time of the Restoration, decorative frames were made. At first they were architectural in character; but later they became simpler and were often but a narrow margin or "list" of walnut, or ebony, or wood stained black to represent ebony. The glass was usually beveled and the outline of the bevel followed the curves of the inner frame. The Vauxhall plates were small; and, therefore, the mirrors were often in two pieces, the larger one at the base and the smaller one, forming a sort of panel, at the top. The upper panel was finished with a dull surface, and figures and patterns were cut in the back of the glass, producing an effect like that of embossed work or gem-cutting. Sometimes two or three plates were framed together and the joints hidden by bands of gilded wood, or metal, like the outside frame, or by strips of colored glass.