Crystal Glass

Pulter’s tiger gazes into a specific kind of mirror: a “crystal glass.” English mirrors in the first half of the sixteenth century were most commonly made of reflective metal. When crystal glass mirrors began to be imported from Continental Europe by the 1570s, several writers discussed the relative merits of this new luxury item compared to the more traditional polished steel mirrors. When Pulter wrote her tiger emblem more than half a century later, the technology of crystal glass was no longer new, but her emphasis on the mirror’s material engages with a decades-old discourse about the connotations of that particular kind of glass.

Rayna Kalas
The Technology of Reflection: Renaissance Mirrors of Steel and Glass

The crystal glass mirror was neither a distorted reflection, nor required polishing, and thus in no way served as a reminder that God alone sees and judges each person as he or she truly is. Indeed the clarity of the reflection seems to have been perceived by some as a usurpation of divine vision. Wearing a mirror to church flaunts this usurpation in the very place where one should be most conscious of being seen by God. The mirror had for so many centuries served as a figure of God’s divine creation that it was an affront, or so it seemed, that any bourgeois citizen could produce in an instant, and without any effort or travail, a counterfeit image of crystal clarity.

Rayna Kalas, “The Technology of Reflection: Renaissance Mirrors of Steel and Glass,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.3 (October 2002): 520.

Several Christian writers in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries called their works “mirrors.” Puritan Samuel Clarke titled his 1646 book A Mirror or Looking-Glass, Both for Saints and Sinners. Thomas Salter’s The Mirror of Modesty (1579) begins with a note to his readers that identifies the treatise specifically as a “crystal glass.”

Thomas Salter, The Mirror of Modesty

In my judgment there is nothing more meet, especially for young maidens, than a mirror, therein to see and behold how to order their doing. I mean not a crystal mirror made by handy art, by which maidens nowadays do only take delight daily to trick and trim their tresses, standing tooting [gazing] two hours by the clock, looking now on this side, now on that, least anything should be lacking needful to further pride, not suffering so much as a hair to hang out of order. No, I mean no such mirror, but the mirror I mean is made of another manner of matter and is of much more worth than any crystal mirror; for as the one teacheth how to attire the outward body, so the other guideth to garnish the inward mind and maketh it meet for virtue, and therefore is entitled a mirror meet for matrons and maidens, for matrons to know how to train up such young maidens as are committed to their charge and tuition [custody or tutelage], and for maidens how to behave themselves to attain to the seat of good fame.

Thomas Salter, A Mirror Meet for All Mothers, Matrons, and Maidens, Entitled the Mirror of Modesty (London, 1579), sig. A6r-A6v, Early English Books Online, with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation modernized.

In a satire by George Gascoigne, crystal glass (also called beryl glass) represents everything that is wrong with English society.

George Gascoigne, The Steel Glass

I see and sigh (because it makes me sad)
That peevish pride doth all the world possess,
And every wight will have a looking glass
To see himself, yet so he seeth him not.
Yea, shall I say? A glass of common glass,
Which glist’reth bright and shows a seemly show,
Is not enough; the days are past and gone.
That beryl glass, with foils [metal backing] of lovely brown,
Might serve to show a seemly favored face.
That age is dead and vanished long ago,
Which thought that steel, both trusty was and true,
And needed not a foil of contraries,
But showed all things, even as they were indeed.
Instead whereof, our curious years can find
The crystal glass, which glimpseth brave and bright,
And shows the thing much better than it is,
Beguiled with foils of sundry subtle sights,
So that they seem and covet not to be.

This is the cause (believe me now, my Lord)
That realms do rue [fall] from high prosperity,
That kings decline from princely government,
That lords do lack their ancestors’ good will,
That knights consume their patrimony still,
That gentlemen do make the merchant rise,
That plowmen beg and craftsmen cannot thrive,
That clergy quails [turns bad] and hath small reverence,
That laymen live by moving mischief still,
That courtiers thrive at latter Lammas-day,
That officers can scarce enrich their heirs,
That soldiers starve or preach at Tyburn Cross,
That lawyers buy and purchase deadly hate,
That merchants climb and fall again as fast,
That roisters [bullies] brag above their betters roam,
That sycophants are counted jolly guests,
That Lais [a temptress] leads a lady’s life aloft,
And Lucrece lurks with sober bashful grace.

This is the cause (or else my muse mistakes)
That things are thought, which never yet were wrought,
And castles built above in lofty skies,
Which never yet had good foundation.
And that the same may seem no feigned dream,
But words of worth and worthy to be weighed.
I have presumed my Lord for to present
With this poor glass, which is of trusty steel,
And came to me, by will and testament,
Of one that was a glassmaker in deed.
Lucilius [Roman satirist] this worthy man was named,
Who at his death bequeathed the crystal glass
To such as love, to seem but not to be,
And unto those that love to see themselves
How foul or fair soever that they are;
He ’gan bequeath a glass of trusty steel,
Wherein they may be bold always to look
Because it shows all things in their degree.
And since myself (now pride of youth is past)
Do love to be and let all seeming pass,
Since I desire to see myself in deed,
Not what I would, but what I am or should;
Therefore I like this trusty glass of steel.

George Gascoigne, The Steel Glass (London, 1576), sig. C1r-C2v, Early English Books Online, with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation modernized.