![]() ![]() The glass mirror was gradually improved until, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, it completely supplanted the speculum. The breaking of a mirror has always been considered an omen of ill fortune this superstition probably was due to the fact that mirrors were much used in divination, and to break one was to destroy the means of contact with the gods, and so to anger them. Apparently, however, mirrors of this type were less favored than the specula, possibly because they were thought to be less efficient, certainly because they were more fragile. These most ancient looking glasses were generally coated with tin. Since it was manufactured by the Phoenicians at Sidon and was mentioned by Pliny. The common looking glass, it seems, also has an ancient history, ![]() In later and mediaeval times small mirrors of burnished metal, generally of steel or silver, were carried by ladies of rank, and even today, similar mirrors are used under conditions where a glass mirror would be in great danger of breakage and irreplaceable, as every sportsman and participant in the late war well knows. Most of them bear on their reverse very interesting engraved scenes from classical mythology. They ordinarily consist of a thin disk of bronze, slightly convex and highly polished on one side, held by a projecting handle. The most artistic mirrors, however, are the Etruscan and the Grecian. The mirror of classical antiquity was doubtless perfected and somewhat standardized very early in the history of metal working, for it is found dating from early times in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The first man who hammered and cast copper could scarcely have failed to note its powers of reflection and thereupon determine to make for himself an object for that special purpose. The manufacture of mirrors probably began with the discovery of metal working. Artificial mirrors of any kind have been known for but a few millenniums, only a tiny fraction of man’s age, yet such was the longing urge of mankind ” to see ourselves as others see us” that mirrors are found among the first of the products of the earliest high cultures, those of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. THE idea of a mirrorless world is far from being a purely hypothetical one the human world was without mirrors for untold ages, and even today many savage peoples have never seen a mirror, start in surprise and fear when they first behold one, and know their own countenances only as dimly and vaguely outlined in the quiet waters of a pool. ![]()
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