Through the Looking Glass: A History of Mirrors

[Music] the market research firm reports and data estimates the global mirror Market to be 122 billion dollars in 2021 reflecting the huge demand for mirrors in all manner of projects the human desire to see oneself goes all the way back to Antiquity and continues untarnished to this day it is history that deserves to be remembered in prehistoric times there were a few options for early people to view themselves the best option was still water where images can be reflected with remarkable Clarity in ancient Greek myth The Young and Beautiful narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water numerous Mesoamerican cultures used bowls of water as reflective surfaces in divination ceremonies an ancient Chinese word for Mirror can be translated as a tub filled with water human societies however soon search for better mirrors the first manufactured mirrors were made from Stone especially obsidian polished until they reflected a decent image these kinds of mirrors have been found in the earliest human settlements such as what has been described as the world's first city the southern Anatolian proto-city of Catal Holyoke the city was inhabited over nine thousand years ago and Polished obsidian mirrors have been discovered there dating to at least 7 500 years ago these mirrors are small with the largest having a diameter of around three and a half inches and convex slightly higher in the middle than at the edges they were found in Graves as burial goods and once that was in Lime plaster archaeologist William finders Petrie suggested that groundstone pallets might have been wetted and used by the Egyptians as mirrors in pre-dynastic times several thousand years later came metal mirrors first of copper but also bronze and silver like obsidian heavily polished Metals discs or ovals often with handles reflected decent images and have been found in Mesopotamia from around 6 000 years ago what appeared to be mirrors began appearing in art across the region afterwards in Egypt the Levant and Mesopotamia across the world polished Stone mirrors a pyrite and Micah appeared in the Americas around it four thousand years ago bronze mirrors appeared around the same time in China in mesoamerica the Olmec civilization produced concave mirrors from Iron Ore as early as 3500 years ago the Maya are also known to have made mirrors as our South American cultures including the Mochi and Inca mirrors the world over often used for ritual and religious purposes or believed to have magical properties in addition to more prosaic use it looking at one's face the Bronze Age saw a proliferation of mirrors with major centers beginning to manufacture them such as the people of karma in Nubia evidence shows that even at this early date one of the primary uses of the mirror was for applying makeup in Egypt mirrors were associated with dressing and grooming they were also often highly decorated with carved handles of stone Ivory or wood representing goddesses and upper-class women hinged boxes and closing a mirror like a compact had been found there's extensive evidence that mirror technology was traded with ties between art objects from Egypt to Western India speculum metal an ally made of copper and tan is highly reflective and the Chinese were making mirrors out of it more than two thousand years ago during the Warring States period at a similar time the same mirrors appear in Rome as well in general mirrors across the world of this period were expensive highly decorated and largely owned by the wealthy Rome invased the show servants holding mirrors for their wealthy employers body length mirrors did exist and large metal mirrors were hung on walls in barber shops according to Pliny the Elder silver mirrors became popular during the Roman Republic under Pompey the great although they were mentioned at least a hundred years earlier by the time of the Roman Empire silver mirrors were set to be widely used even by servants Greek philosophers Socrates advised young people to look at mirrors so that if they were beautiful they would be aware of it and if they were ugly they would know to hide their disgrace through learning glass production began in Egypt Syria or Mesopotamia 5600 years ago but initially was used mostly for beads and various vessels and art it wasn't until the first century the discovery of glass blowing made using glass in mirrors possible earlier glass tended to be opaque thanks to impurities in the materials and thick glass blowing allowed glassmakers to create thin transparent glass in large quantities seiden in modern Lebanon was a particular Center for glass production in the Roman period and plenty suggests that mirrors like our modern ones with a layer of glass were first produced there although they never came into wide use glass mirrors don't appear in the archaeological record until two centuries later the earliest glass mirrors were made by blowing a glass bubble and then cutting off a small circular piece which could then be backed by a silvered or even gilded surface the images produced were easily distorted in the earliest glass mirrors are tiny usually only a few inches in diameter while glass mirrors seem to be inferior metal mirrors were incredibly popular among the wealthy Roman philosopher Seneca complained that for a single one of these mirrors of chiseled silver or gold inlaid with gems women are capable of paying an amount equal to the Dowry the state once offered to poor generals daughters it took centuries more before glass could be made with sufficient transparency and with large flat surfaces in the Middle Ages mirrors continue to be made with silver polished metals and glass 11th century French Artisans made Flat Glass by blowing a glass bubble and spinning it rapidly to cause the heated glass to flatten small rectangular pieces of flat glass could then be cut out in 1250 when Rider claimed glass mirrors silvered with lead were Superior and by the 14th century Florentine mirror makers figured out how to apply lead without heat which removed the risk of the glass shattering from thermal shock other kinds of silvering using tan and Mercury also developed and these glass mirrors became popular although they didn't replace the larger polished metal mirrors these silver mirrors were prone to distorting Reflections one writer described the image he saw in a glass mirror as someone else rather than oneself Johann Gutenberg inventor of the printing press sold these mirrors to pilgrims to aachen to sow into their hats supposedly the glass could capture the grace emanating from holy relics even When the Crowds prevented them from actually being seen another important step in Mirror making came with the invention of cylindrical glass blowing where blowing glasses worked into a cylinder both ends cut and then the entire cylinder cut along its side while still hot the glass is then allowed to settle into a flat sheet making larger mirrors possible by the 15th century glass makers in Lorraine had mastered the art of mirror making a lorrainian historian claims that The Artisans there invented a way to make mirrors of glass the venetians also lay claim to mastering the art first and it was the venetians specifically the mirror Artisans of Murano who made a glass so fine that they called it crystalline when and who invented the crystalline glass as a matter of debate one historian attributed to a family of glassmakers in 1463 but numerous other Artisans claim some credit one family of glassmakers claimed to have been making crystal for 200 years by the 15th century Bohemia another Glass Center also makes a claim to inventing the process while the delgalos brothers declared in 1503 that they alone knew the secret of Making Mirrors of crystalline glass the brothers asked the Venetian Republic to have the exclusive right to make their glass for 25 years venice's reputation for master craftsmanship eventually eclipsed all other centers in Europe drawing masters from all over the continent artisans in Murano have been making glass since at least 12 55 and then 1291 Venice passed a law that restricted the industry to Murano Glass making became so Central to the Venetian economy that the glassmaker guild past laws to protect their control of the industry Venetian glassmakers were forbidden from divulging their secret processes they were forbidden from leaving the Republic without permission if they did leave their families would be imprisoned and an assassin would be sent after them then it's also granted glassmakers broad privileges less maker children were allowed to marry Nobles and were given months-long vacations in the summer the Venetian Masters learned through travel and error how to make the finest glass in all of Europe and among the beautiful Windows vessels and Beads they made they also mastered the divinely beautiful pure and Incorruptible object the mirror mirrors became a sought after luxury in Isfahan in modern Iran the palace had a room of mirrors while the Lahore Palace in India had Venetian mirrors lining the Royal Apartments while masterful the Phoenicians could only make mirrors about the size of a tray around 40 square inches polished metal mirrors remained in wide use and were much cheaper mirrors were at this point common items from pocket mirrors to grooming mirrors but it wasn't until the end of the 17th century that metal mirrors largely disappeared from the estate inventories of the wealthy Catherine de Medici wife of French King Henry II installed a chamber of mirrors that held 119 Venetian mirrors and of Austria Louis xii's Queen had a chamber of mirrors in the Louvre used for grooming her hair nobility all over the continent demanded mirrors a late 17th century Countess was reported to have traded a wheat farm for a mirror which he thought was a bargain France especially became entranced and in the 1500s of Venetian mirror with the silver border was worth more than twice a painting by Raphael the French were spending an absurd amount of money on Venetian glass draining the Royal treasury the king bought thousands of pounds with the mirrors in 1665. French royalty were extremely interested in creating their own mirror industry which struggled against Phoenician resistance glassmakers were granted titles of nobility and Monopoly rights but they failed again and again Louis XIV Finance Minister Colbert turned to espionage to establish a crown mirror industry French ambassador to Venice secretly worked attempted Venetian mirror makers to France the Royal company of glass and mirrors was founded in venice's threats against classmakers leaving them were not idle because at least two Venetian Artisans were assassinated in Germany in 1547 in 1665 Venetian glassmakers were secreted to Paris despite venice's counter efforts the Venetian Ambassador in France cajole and bribed the workers in Paris to return to Italy and Colbert was forced to provide large salaries fake letters from their wives and Morano begged The Artisans to return several of the wives were smuggled into Paris by the French but the company was a financial disaster and the immigrants even began fighting among themselves to the point of a gunfight Colbert considered offering land and retirement benefits to tint more workers but then in 1667 a Murano worker died in Paris it was soon followed by a second and the deaths feared to be assassinations said many of the venetians home France's true breakthrough came later when French classmakers learned to cast glass on a table allowing for much larger pains by 1682 French Artisans constructed the Chamber of mirrors at Versailles where more than 300 mirrors combined to form a single pane expand this Hull a million times over so it seems almost infinite a second glass industry was established that could produce mirrors more than five feet tall and eventually set up at San gabane the two factories were combined into the Royal glass company of France by 1700 the single bean factory produced a nine foot tall pane of glass and in Venice where The Artisans were still blowing their glass panes they were unable to match the huge French panes though the Venetian mirrors were of better quality the glass Ramirez was buffed and shined in Paris so a few pains could survive the journey before being silvered by an amalgam of silver and Mercury workers regularly sickened from the Mercury fumes but France couldn't keep the secret to herself and soon glass workers were being hired away to England and across the continent throughout the 18th century refinements that the mirrors becoming Cheaper by 1750 San gabane was selling 1.182 million pounds worth of glass a year while venice's glass languished on the turn of the 19th century saw mirrors everywhere in Paris when seventy percent of homes in Paris had a mirror even apparently large mirrors became every day and said their highly decorated frames the Republic of Geneva even prohibited citizens from having more than one mirror in each room or taller than 32 inches mirrors remained rare however in rural areas until the late 19th century throughout the 18th century mirror production remained essentially the same but in 1835 German chemist Eustis Von liebig invented the wet deposition process with silvered mirrors with silver by chemically reducing silver nitrate and this process was used in industrial production of mirrors in 1843 Englishman Thomas Drayton patented method for silvering without the use of Mercury around 1860 new ovens were invented that could better distribute temperature and reduce flaws in the glass glass was quickly becoming every day and could be used in huge quantities like it was for the Crystal Palace in 1851 mirrors simultaneously were manufactured in huge quantities between 1852 and 1862 production of glass at Sango ban doubled from a million to more than 2 million square feet and doubled again between 1878 and 1898. the 20th century saw Innovation as well especially for scientific mirrors that often needed to be reflective without the glass to interfere with the reflection gas discharge lamps in the 1920s and 30s had a tendency to have a mirror-like surface form on the inside of the glass as metal was ejected from the electrodes called sputtering by the 1970s semiconductor technology used a similar method for Metal Coating in 1912 evaporation coding was developed which John Strong used to make the first aluminum coated telescope mirrors in the 1930s and as mirrors reflect our appearance they've also come to reflect culture medieval historian Ian Mortimer argues in his 2016 book Millennium that the Improvement in quality and availability of mirrors in the 15th century changed the way that humans saw themselves reflecting a significant shift from the Medieval World to the modern world previously people only saw their identity he argues in relation to other groups but when we started seeing ourselves in mirrors the concept of individuality arose individualities we understand it today he argues did not exist previously today mirrors are so common that you can hardly avoid looking in them at 2007 study in the United Kingdom found that the average person looks at a mirror about once every half hour mirrors are downright cheap today and we take access to that perfect image for granted and apparently we've desired to see our image since earliest human history but you have to understand that for most of human history that intimate knowledge of your appearance was a rare thing a luxury that was only available to the rich I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of the history guy and if you did please feel free to like And subscribe and share the history guide with your friends and if you also believe that history deserves to be remembered then you can support the history guy as a member on YouTube a supporter on our community and locals or as a patron on patreon you can also check out our great merchandise shop or book a special message from the history guy on cameo oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 43,851

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: qNCUl5k02J8

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023