Mirror

Cast bronze rectangular mirror made in northern Italy. Made from bronze with a high tin content to achieve a reflective, shiny surface. The mirror has corroded leaving some areas pristine, virtually with its original surface, and other areas corroding badly. This is because of the way the copper alloy cooled down, leaving slightly different alloy compositions within different areas of the mirror, so some areas were more vulnerable to corrosion than others. This alloy is also very brittle, which is why the mirror was in so many fragments. It had to be pieced together from around thirty fragments; the central area was missing. Found with an early Roman burial in Harper Road, Southwark.