This little mirror may not seem impressive, but for the people who adored them, they made a lovely scene even lovelier.
In the late 18th century, a Claude glass was used to look at beautiful scenery. To use the glass, you would come across a beautiful scene in nature and turn your back to it. You would open your Claude glass, framing “a picture, that if I could transmit it to you, & fix it in all the softness of its living colours. This is the sweetest scene I can yet discover in point of pastoral beauty.”
People in love with beauty would arm themselves with Claude glasses, tinted green, pink, blue or black to obscure and make the scene hazy and dream-like. Condensed into the tiny mirror, all subjects became the mythical realm of Shangri-la, a tiny spot of paradise to let your dreams take wing.
In the days before the camera, a Claude glass was the perfect and only way to capture and frame wild scenery.