4. Treatment Goals

The goals of the treatment were to:

• Try to determine age and origin of the looking glass (is the memory a myth?)
• Spot test for mercury/silver
• PXRF test confirmed silver

Testing revealed that the mirroring was silver, not a mercury-tin amalgam. The process of silvering mirrors was not invented until 1835, and didn’t become popular until the late 1850’s. This means that either the mirror was not produced until after 1835, or it could have been produced pre-revolutionary war and was stripped of its mercury-tin amalgam and silvered at some point in time. This is what we believe happened.