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Mirroring is a simple chemical process:
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Clean the glass
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Sensitize the glass
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Apply the mirroring solution (see video
clip)
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Allow time for the mirror to deposit
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Dry and paint your mirror
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This is a clip from our 30 minute DVD
Creating a Mirror on Glass: Silver & Gold
About Us
In Chicago, we have thousands of stained glass windows in our
early 20th century
Historic Chicago Bungalows.
Many of them contain double-sided gold mirrored glass (two pieces
of thin gold mirror in a single came). The gold is not gold leaf - it does not have leaf lines and it is backed with a layer of silver. When I started
Stained Glass Ltd. in 1985
I couldn't find anyone who knew how to gild glass without using
gold leaf.
Eventually I heard about
Rick
Glawson , a master sign painter in California. Rick had
noticed that some antique signs had been made with seamless gold
backed with silver. Early copies of
Signs of the
Times magazine led Rick to rediscover a 19th Century
technique for chemical or solution gilding on glass. Sign
painters called it Angel Gilding to distinguish it from leaf
gilding. My suspicions about the gold in Chicago's stained glass
were confirmed when Frank Drehobl, the owner of
Chicago's second oldest stained glass studio told me that, as
a boy in his father shop, he had poured "liquid gold" on to
heated glass make gold mirror. The process he described was just
the same as Rick's.
I bought my Angel Gilding supplies from Rick until his sudden
death in 2003. When his family and friends declined to take over the chemical side
of his business, I turned to my husband for help. Mike had
received a Master's degree in chemistry from Oxford University
before going into computers. He left the computer business and
together we founded AngelGilding.com to make mirroring
chemicals and techniques available to glass artists everywhere.
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The scientific term for mirroring is "the second surface
electroless
chemical deposition of a metal on a non-conductive
transparent substrate".
We welcome all scientific
inquiries.
We dedicate this site to Rick Glawson and all "Keepers of the
Craft".
Mike and Sarah King |
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