A Trip Through the Portrait Gallery (4)

Looks like all that art has gotten to someone’s head!

See how he was trying to admire himself in that mirror?

But while we have several very handsome mirrors to go along with the portraits in the Harrison House, as far as art goes, they are dangerous! That mirror particularly is known to have been made using mercury. Using mercury to give mirrors a reflective coating is a process that was used as early as the 1400s, and up through the early 1800s, right when the Harrison House was first built. Today, mirrors are made using much safer processes!

If you want to learn more about how the process works and how to tell if a mirror was made using mercury, check out this webpage.