The setup is a variation on one commonly used for shooting small parts - the object is set on a piece of glass but the back side of the glass is painted black - I'll do a more detailed response when I get back to my desk - its a cool technique but fairly easy
Placing an object on glass gives you a really clean reflection - but you get a reflection from both the upper and lower surfaces of the glass - painting the back side of the glass black (spray paint is fine) removes the second reflection from the bottom surface of the glass -
The "Magic" part of the set up is the reflection - you light the object the way you want it on the glass - lots of options - but with the camera looking at the object and the glass, the surface of the glass takes on whatever is behind the glass and lit - the reflection of the vertical surface behind the glass becomes the surface of the glass - can be a black piece of foam core (unlit) like in the pen photo or a brightly lit white card - lit in a color, or a pattern or anything you want to see reflected as the surface the pen is sitting on - because the object blocks the reflection but only exactly where it is sitting, you don't get background color on the object or have to mask and add a background (an option that wasn't available without a lot of hand work before computer imaging) - I shot the fountain pen with a lit blue background standing behind the glass about three feet - to insure that noting about the foam core or the lighting would be in focus and it would be completely uniform. The pen in the forest is just to show that the background can be anything - this was just light on a large print - but I shook a dusty rag over the glass so you can see the surface plane of the glass - if its clean, its invisible.
Small objects can be done with a small piece of glass and a small background - in this case the glass is 16" x 24" - Large objects need bigger pieces of glass and I've shot on 6' x 10' glass but that also requires a larger background surface and more distance for it to be out of focus - so lots of space - but the small objects can be set up on a simple table top space.
