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The city of Venice monopolized the mirror-glass making in Europe in the seventeenth century. Then it was spread from England. The first mirror were flats plates of highly polished metal called 'steel'. Mirrors were framed like paintings. Most of them were made with a deep rounded edge Wholesale Jerseys , veneered with walnut, carved, inlaid with marquetry or lacquered.
Mirrors
The first mirrors to be used in England were flat plates of highly polished metal called 'steel', but actually an alloy of copper and tin they were of small size and very heavy. Venice had a monopoly of making mirror-glass, and it was exported from there to the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century Venetian workers began to make it in England, and the use of glass mirrors for personal use and for decoration became widespread.
At first they were framed in a similar manner to paintings, and it is difficult to decide whether a seventeenth-century frame was made for a picture or a mirror. Those known as 'cushion-shaped', with a deep rounded edge, veneered with walnut, carved, inlaid with marquetry or lacquered, were among the earliest made.
By the end of the century, very large mirrors had become fashionable. There was a limit to the size of a sheet of glass that could then be made, so a frame was filled sometimes with more than one sheet, and often bordered with a number of smaller ones. The mantelpiece in the principal room of a mansion would have a large mirror over it Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping , and these over mantel mirrors were sometimes framed in walnut and gilt wood; the frame also incorporating an oil painting and filling the entire space above the fireplace. Over mantel mirrors continued to be made, and their styles followed those of wall mirrors down the years.
During the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, many small mirror-frames were made, and these were veneered with walnut sometimes enriched with gilt carving. Many of them survive today, but the greater proportion of so-called Queen Anne mirrors are little more than thirty years old. Gilding continued in fashion, and mirrors appeared in frames of pinewood brightly gilt and carved flatly in gesso a type of plaster composition which could be carved and smoothed and took the gold-leaf in a satisfactory manner. By 1735-40 taste had changed once more, and large mirrors of severe design with tall rectangular glasses were appearing on fashionable walls.
Mirror frames were the object of great attention from carvers and gilders throughout the eighteenth century; the most elaborate examples of their work came in the middle years.
Then, fashion allowed them to incorporate what they pleased on the frame: shepherds and shepherdesses, Chinese gods, waterfalls, sea-shells, ruined temples and bouquets of flowers vie for attention on some of the extreme examples, which are masterpieces of the carver's art. Following these exuberances, came the more restrained style set by the Adam brothers. Frames were then often oval in shape, and embellished with honeysuckle Wholesale Jerseys Cheap , husks and winged seated griffins. At the end of the eighteenth century, the frame was even plainer, and the most popular ones had the glass flanked by a column at either side, and sometimes with a painting on glass at the top.
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