The perception of what things are made of has been a long standing interest. For some recent demonstrations of the perception of shiny surfaces, see: Material from Motion: Shiny or matte?
References
Naor-Raz, G., Tarr, M. J., & Kersten, D. (2003). Is color an intrinsic property of object representation? Perception, 32(6), 667-680. (pdf)
Bloj, M., Kersten, D., & Hurlbert, A. C. (1999). 3D Shape Perception Influences Colour Perception via Mutual Illumination. Nature. (pdf)
Kersten, D., Bülthoff, H. H., Schwartz, B., & Kurtz, K. (1992) Interaction between transparency and structure from motion. Neural Computation, 4, 573-589
Knill, D. C., & Kersten, D. (1991) Apparent surface curvature affects lightness perception. Nature, 351, 228-229. (pdf 1.1Mb)