one way reflective/ non-reflective glass

[Jarvman]

Can someone please tell me what the rules with these are please?

I'm trying to frame glass plate photographs (wet plate collodion) behind glass. These are positive images on the surface of solid black glass that have been varnished. They are recessed behind the glass to a depth of about 3mm.

I have found they look great behind one-way reflective glass but look very diffuse and lacking impact/sharpness behind two way reflective. Have I just wasted thirty quid on two way reflective glass? What else could I use this for? Does it need to be directly in contact with the artwork to look acceptable?

Cheers!

[realhotglass]

Probably yes to wasting $ on the 'double sided' (?) etched glass.
Etched glass, be it single or double sided, is usually not the best for spacing away from flat art more than one mat (mount) board.

One way reflective glass ?
Do you mean optically coated low reflection glass ?
(Such as TV Museum, Artglass, or other such brands ?)

If so, then you know how good it looks, and usually worth the cost to show the sharp detail of the art.

[David McCormack]

By one-way and two-way do you mean etched one side and etched both sides?

Etched one side (front) is OK up to a couple of mm with window-mounts and etched both sides is when you need the glass to be against the art such as cheap posters

I think your wet plates will be better off behind anti-reflection optically coated glass?

[prospero]

So-called 'non-reflective' glass really has no place in a framers stock nowadays. It never was a magic solution to reflections. All it does is blur the reflections a bit and it is only really effective if the art is pressed close up against the glass. As soon as it is moved just a little away - even the thickness of a window mount - you start to get the misty effect. Object boxes ?- forget it.

There are anti-reflective speciality glasses available today. They are expensive compared to standard float glass, but getting cheaper. True-Vue UltraVue is very good and not in the realms of fantasy pricewise. And as well as being less reflective, it's clearer and causes minimal colour shift.

I'm thinking photo plates are not enormous things so the cost of AR glass is not going to hurt too much. If you think the plates may need protection from UV light, then you could go for Museum glass which has the same AR properties but with extra (though not total) UV filtering.