Four of a set of eight panels, each 250cm. square

  Glass News   April 2004

Defining the Art of Reverse Painting and Gilding on Glass

Achterglasschildering, agglomizzato, amelieren, coperta di saracinesca, English glass painting,  fixés sous verre, hinterglasmalerei, peinture sous verre, pittura su vetro, pittura translucida,  modo di damasco, tinsel painting, verre églomisé and zwischengoldglas are only some of the bewildering terms used for reverse painting and gilding on glass; the definition of this unfired decoration is no simple thing.
The first list is in alphabetical order, but to rearrange them in geographical groupings it would look like this:
English, English glass pictures, tinsel painting, verre églomisé
French, fixés sous verre, verre églomisé
German, amelieren, hinterglasmalerei, zwischengoldglas
Italian, agglomizzato, coperta di saracinesca, modo di damasco, pittura su vetro.

As the Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms, only mentions Zwischengoldglas, tinsel painting and verre églomisé, a satisfactory definition of the remaining terms is still needed.  

A group of these terms: coperta di saracinesca, modo di damasco, pittura su vetro, fixés sous verre refer to the practice of first painting foil and then attaching it to the back of glass.  It was a fore-runner to engraving the attached gold leaf, and was practiced extensively in the 1300's as the great cathedrals of Europe were going up. The technique was clever: the painted foil reflected light and imitated stained glass, especially useful in places with no natural source of light, such as crypts. Fixés sous verre has become a general term, in France, to refer to most types of reverse painting and gilding on glass.
Achterglasschildering and Hinterglasmalerei is literally painting behind glass, or better put, reverse glass painting. This usually refers to just the painting part, with no mention of foil.
Amelieren The first mention of the profession of Amalierer, one who gilds and paints behind glass, was found to be in city of Augsburg records of the early 1600's.   The name derives from Emailierer, enameller, and meant that the work was recognized as being an imitation of enamelling.   The term is almost, but not quite obsolete.

English glass painting refers to transferred prints on the back of glass. A fresh engraving was glued to the glass, and when dry the paper was carefully washed away, leaving only the engraved lines in place.  The glass was then hand coloured.  These were charming pictures often seen as panels in very small tabernacle or Regency mirror frames. 

Tinsel painting was "painting on the reverse side of a piece of glass, which is then backed with crinkled tin foil, so that the painting itself seems to sparkle". The only reference to this term that I have seen is in this dictionary.  It refers to a technique dating from the 1500's where engraved gold leaf was backed with coloured lacquer and then backed with foil. Some researchers, like Mr Frieder Ryser, believe it is this technique alone to which the term Amalieren should refer. 

The term verre églomisé is becoming more familiar and has been used to refer to any cold decoration on the back of glass with foil or metal, with or without gold. An eighteenth century Parisian picture dealer, Jean- Baptiste Glomy, thought to frame his prints with glass with a gold border, backed with black paint.  Since then many museums and auction houses have referred to even remotely similar work, such as Roman gold glasses, as églomisé, and the name has stuck.  The purists are unhappy with the term, and since the early twentieth century there has been vigorous debate over its use, but it has stuck, notwithstanding. Cennino Cennini described the process in his treatise, as it was practised in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Zwischengoldglas "(German, glass with gold between) A type of glass formed of two layers sandwiching a decoration in gold leaf".  The earliest examples are in the British Museum, a set of bowls from Canosa, 250 BC. Much later, in Bohemia, drinking vessels with finely drawn hunting scenes were a favourite. 

Now, the term usually used is verre églomisé, referring to any type of glass that has been decorated on the in reverse, unfired, with some sort of metal leaf and paint.  As Cennini described it in the fifteenth century, a solution derived from beaten egg whites was used to glue the 22- 24 ct. gold leaf to the glass. This was called glair, and once dry, the image would have been engraved into the gold with fine needles.  The work was then backed up with a solid colour, an oil- based pigment. Today we have many more choices of precious leaf, including a group known as white gold: an alloy of gold and silver.  Depending on the proportions of the two metals, the leaf appears more or less silvery. 

Working as a restorer of gilded furniture in London, in the early eighties, I was introduced to verre églomisé as 19th century panels from Regency mirrors needed replacing.  These were mirrors, or looking glasses as they were then known, the design of which looked back to classical architecture: a frame of gilded pine with pilasters or columns supporting a cornice, with a pediment below. The frieze was a decorated panel,  separated from the main mirror plate by a filet.  From around 1800 to 1820 these panels were usually of verre églomisé, depicting standard landscapes; favourite motifs such as gardening implements; musical instruments; patterns and scenes for the U.S. market, such as  commemorating the death of George Washington.  Many mirrors of this kind were exported to the United States and they soon started their own manufacture.  As the costs of labour started to rise, these delicate panels were replaced with much clumsier, heavier gilded wood and composition panels. Having to replace the glass panels them taught me not only about the techniques, but about the manner in which they must have been produced.  The 'handwriting' on most of the ones I met was strong and confident.  They were certainly not done one at a time; they were churned out, mass produced.  It is hard to regain that spirit when replacing a broken glass was only one of many tasks in a restorers' day. 

At that period the use of the newly rediscovered bituminous substance, asphaltum, classed as a tar- based pigment, became ubiquitous.  The scourge of modern day conservators, it was the mainstay of many artists.  It served glass painters' purposes perfectly, as it was a beautiful colour and dried fast, even if not hard.  But it shrinks and crackles over time, and a visit to the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, will provide plenty of evidence of cracked, shrinking asphaltum pulling gold away from the glass.  And that takes some doing.     

Later, I had the opportunity to replace panels from border glasses from a much earlier period: from those made around 1700.  The techniques were very different: more according to those described by Cennini .  The new, larger looking glasses now available to the wealthiest classes, as they built their stately homes, were wildly costly at first.  No expense was spared in their framing. 

Contained within carved and gilded frames, varying from most discreet to way over- the- top, elaborate border glasses of verre églomisé enhanced  set off these enormous, new silvered glass plates. along with items of matching furniture, furnished these important houses.  Borders of this type were used for a very short time, only about ten years. Unfortunately most of the matching furniture has not survived.  However, the looking glasses were often so large and heavy that their removal was a problem. Now we have the benefit of seeing some of them in their original settings in the stately homes of Britain.  Examples can be seen at Arundel, Penshurst and Clandon Park, to name a few.  England was not the only source of these mirrors: Swedish royalty patronised two talented Germans living in Sweden at the time, Gustav and Burchard Precht. Both are known for making very fine looking glasses and furniture.  Some glasses with such borders have been given French provenance; presumably not all Huguenot craftsmen fled, and maybe not all such craftsmen were Huguenot.  This could be the subject of another paper.