This opaque surface design is created by fusing together pieces of clear, silver and iridised glass before silvering the back face.

Fused Glass

• Fused glass is made from separate pieces of glass that have been heat bonded together. This is done by layering either multiple pieces of glass, glass frit, or glass powders and heating (through a process of raising and holding the kiln temperatures at various steps) until the glass pieces fuse together.
• Not all glass can be fused together. The glass used must all have the same co-efficiency of thermal expansion (the amount the glass expands when heated / cooled). If the glass used were to have different co-efficiencies of thermal expansion, areas of the glass would expand at a different rate when heated and contract at a different rate when cooled – creating structural pressures on the fused panel.

Gilded / Mirrored / Silvered Glass

• Silvered glass (or mirrored glass) is produced by coating a glass surface with a reflective substance. Although it is called silvering, this is just a remnant of past times when silver was the most common substance used in the process – a variety of metallic substances such as aluminium or tin can also be used.
• Gilding is a technique for decorating surfaces by applying a thin layer of metal (metal leaf). The surface is then described as having been gilt. This is traditionally gold (gold gilded / gold gilt) but a range of metals can be used such as silver (silver gilded / silver gilt), copper (copper gilded / copper gilt), or bronze (bronze gilded / bronze gilt).