Pieces of glass covered with lead were also found in Roman graves dating from the second and third century. Glass mirrors were quite common in Egypt, Gaul, Germany and Asia. The earliest glass made mirrors were only about three inches in diameter and mirror manufactured from metal was still preferable by many people due to the fact that glass mirrors still did not have a very good reflection.
They became more popular after the invention of a technique which allowed glass manufacturers to make flat thin glass and spread hot metal onto the glass without breaking it. The first mirrors were used almost exclusively by the ruling classes. People have used mirrors both as household objects and as objects of decoration throughout history. The concepts of the soul are often associated with mirrors, which results in a wealth of superstition surrounding mirrors.
For instance, breaking a mirror causes seven years of bad luck because the soul which shatters with the broken mirror regenerates every seven years old Roman legend. Mirrors also have a strong connection to spirits. Mirrors are covered when some dies, because according to some superstitions, a mirror can trap the soul of the person who dies.
During the period of the Renaissance in Europe, mirrors were made by a method of coating glass with a tin and mercury amalgam. In the sixteenth century, Venice became the centre of manufacture for such mirrors. A factory for manufacturing mirrors called Saint-Gobain was established in France, but mirrors were still expensive luxuries and only the very rich owned it. In Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, developed the silvered-glass mirror where a thin layer of metallic silver is put onto glass by the chemical reduction of silver nitrate.
The invention of this process enabled to mirrors being manufactured on a much larger scale, and for the first time in history ordinary people could buy a mirror. Present-day mirrors are more frequently produced by depositing aluminum by vacuum directly onto the glass. There are many superstitions including mirrors.
Breaking a mirror to this day is said to bring bad luck that lasts seven years. When humans started making simple mirrors around B. Eventually, they started to produce more sophisticated mirrors made of copper, bronze, silver, gold and even lead. However, because of the weight of the material, these mirrors were tiny by our standards: They rarely measured more than 8 inches 20 centimeters in diameter and were used mostly for decoration.
One exception was the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, whose large metal mirror reflected sunlight during the day and the fire used to mark the lighthouse at night. Contemporary mirrors did not come into being until the late Middle Ages , and even then their manufacture was difficult and expensive. One of the problems involved was the fact that the sand used for glassmaking contained too many impurities to produce real clarity.
In addition, the shock caused by the heat of adding molten metal for backing almost always broke the glass. It wasn't until the Renaissance, when the Florentines invented a process for making low-temperature lead backing, that modern mirrors made their debut. These mirrors were finally clear enough for artists to use. For example, architect Filippo Brunelleschi created linear perspective with a mirror to give the illusion of depth of field. In addition, mirrors helped jump-start a new form of art: the self-portrait.
Later, the Venetians would conquer the mirror-making trade with their glass-making techniques.
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