Testimonials

European Trade Fair for restoration, preservation of monuments and city regeneration, October 25 - 28, 2006 - Gold medal for outstanding achievements in preservation of monuments in Europe

The award ceremony was held on October 27, 2006, within the framework of the trade fair denkmal 2006

Eulogy

SPIEGEL ART Steffen Noack, Weißwasser
for the rejuvenation of old processes in mirror production and the relevant implementation in preservation work.

After more than two years development work, the company SPIEGEL ART Steffen Noack successfully rejuvenated 17th and 18th century mirror production processes. Using this process, the company was able to recapture the atmosphere of historic mirrors. Whilst today's silver-coated mirrors possess reflection properties of 95 %, the mercury-pewter-amalgam coating of historic mirrors only attain 60 %. The lighting characteristics of a room with traditional mirrors are much softer and alluring

The mirrors in the Green Vaults of the Royal Residence in Dresden will prove the beauty of this technology. Spiegel Art's innovations enable the renewal of defective coatings and thus the maintenance of historic mirrors.

For the rejuvenating of old processes in mirror production and the relevant implementation in preservation work, the company SPIEGEL ART Steffen Noack was awarded the Gold Medal of the Leipzig Trade Fair.

The City Arms in glass has adorned the Town Hall function room in Weisswasser since 16.03.2001.

The illustration of the coat of arms is 82 cm by 103 cm in size and consists of various layers of glass. The layers were joined using clear UV-adhesive.

The coat of arms was based on a drawing by the freelance glass designer, Marika Strobl.

On June 6, 2004, the exhibition "Blockbuster" opened in Weisswasser in a slab construction block earmarked for demolition. The artistic background and subject of this exhibition was life in and around "slabs".

Marika Strobl, a freelance glass designer, took part in this project with her design fabricated by our company and entitled „mirrored, glazed and magic moments“. It consists of two glass figures (about 180 cm high) in a room entirely clad with mirrors. Marika's drawings were put into digital form, milled out using our CNC machine, then ground and polished.
This work of art is also on exhibition in the Glass Museum in Weisswasser.

The Documenta is an exhibition of works of art from all over the world, which takes place in Kassel every 5 years.

Ken Lum - „Mirror Maze with 12 Signs of Depression“

Ken Lum, from Vancouver in Canada, designed a mirror maze of around 49 m². with this title, which was exhibited at the Documenta in Kassel in the year 2002 and remained accessible for the general public for 100 days. The artist's depiction here was of the feelings of a person in the grip of depression.

I RUN AROUND IN A CIRCLE, CANNOT FIND AN ESCAPE ROUTE AND SEE ONLY MYSELF.

Every single person who went into the Mirror Maze recognised the value of this concept and how well Ken Lum realised the vision, the feel and the experience. The illustration of the 12 symbols of depression was done not only through the medium of the maze, but also via the 12 English sentences which were sand-blasted onto the mirrors.

They describe the condition of depression.

The mirror cladding - a huge difference

The issues:

There is only one solution:

The old production methods from the 17th and 18th century must be used.

After two years of developing the technology and the equipment, our company successfully produced mirrors using the old fabrication methods - so successfully, in fact, that no-one was able to differentiate between the new mirrors and the existing old ones. In the report dated 17.03.2005, the Fraunhofer Institute confirmed „that there were no differences between the new and the original mirrors.....“

Illustrations 1 and 2 demonstrate the comparison of the metallurgical cross-section of the original and new pewter- amalgam mirrors. It is obvious that the layering structure is very similar.

The pewter-amalgam layers are made up of two phases, which appear as light grey and white in the illustrations. The main light grey phase contains around 78 % pewter and 22 % mercury in crystalline form. The white amorphous phase between contains mercury with no more than 2 % pewter.

Spiegel Art's new pewter amalgam compound (Illustration 2) is around 110 µm thick and has a mean consistency of 60 % to 65 % pewter and 35 % to 40 % mercury [1].

	The Fraunhofer Institute examined the original and the new mirrors using an electron grid microscope. The samples (approx. 5 mm x 5 mm in size) were cast into epoxy resin. Once the outer surfaces of the resin and the imbedded glass sample had been ground and polished, the examination of the coating layer could begin. Initial results showed that the coating on the original mirror was 0.08 mm thick. The new coating was around 0.1 mm thick. We then changed the constituent quantities of the materials to achieve a coating thickness of 0.08 mm. The layer structure was, however, very similar. Each of the samples tested differed very slightly. However when examining the illustrations, you will see that it is virtually impossible to differentiate between the new and old mirrors..
Illustration 1:Original pewter-amalgam mirror from the Precious Treasure Room of the Green Vaults.
Illustration 2: New pewter-amalgam mirrors made by Spiegel Art

[1] O. Zywitzki, Fraunhofer Institut für Elektronenstrahl- und Plasmatechnik, Analysis of historic mirrors and potential alternative materials. Reconstruction of Dresdner Castle - Green Vaults, Part 2 of the Report dated 16.01.2004 and Part 6 dated 17.03.2005

The manufacture of more than 400 m² of historic mirrors for the Green Vaults in the Royal Residence in Dresden could now begin. The actually cutting of the individual mirrors took place within the Green Vaults. More than 1000 mirrors were created in meticulous fine work, whereby the smallest mirror measured just a few centimetres and the largest 100 cm x 200 cm.
A few of the existing original mirrors were so badly damaged on the coated side that they were hardly recognisable as mirrors. After removal of the coating, the glass was ground and polished. Then the glass was recoated using the rejuvenated technology. Once these pieces of mirror had been replaced, the only discernible different lay in the lack of corrosion marks.
The installation was carried out by an expert team of 3 or 4 members of staff. The installation team cut the historic mirrors on site and installed these into the Green Vaults during the period August 2005 to March 2006. We pride ourselves on our extreme flexibility.
 

Protection of Personnel, the General Public and the Environment

Mercury is toxic - that is a generally known and accepted fact. The big question was then, whether it would be feasible, given today's conditions, to start this production process again?

Finally some examples from the 17th and 18th century which illustrate how careless handling of mercury caused extreme health problems to the employees in the factories. In the research carried out before we developed this technology, we can across many publications relating to poisoning of staff in thermometer manufacturing, dentistry and other professions in which mercury was used.

The purify mercury it was placed into leather pouches and pressed out again. The pollutants remained in the pouch. After some time the leather became brittle and was no longer usable. But it could still be deployed in shoe manufacturing, as described in the 1888 book "Die Fürther Quecksilber - Spiegelbelegen und ihre Arbeiter" (Furth Mercury Coatings and the employees):
„ ... the people employed to press the remaining mercury out of the pouches before the leather was deployed for other purposes..... often suffered from mercury poisoning. My investigations did not just cover those who handled the pouches, but also employees concerned with packaging materials, cobblers, etc who purchased the old mercury pouches and deployed them for other purposes. It was not abnormal to buy boots from a junk dealer and find that a mercury layer appeared on the leather. The victorious Swiss wore golden ring on their toes after the Wars of Burgundy - today's proletarians wore silver-coated boots. An alloy of lead and pewter was generally used to manufacture lead soldiers, a favourite toy in our martial times. To economise some Nuremburg and Furth manufacturers did not use pure pewter, but purchased waste pewter from mirror manufacturers, which contained varying quantities of mercury. In this way the poison was passed on to other manufacturing industries ...“