Repairing an antique mirror

A friend asked me to look at repairing her charming antique, art-nouveau mirror. It's not large, about 30 cm plus the frame. I disassembled it and used UVA (sunlight-activated) clear glue to hold it together just enough to put back into the frame. The options for repairing it are to:

• simply glue the pieces together leaving the seams less obvious
• apply copper foil along the broken seams.

If the foil is left "as is", it will result in something a bit like the effect of Kintsugi, a Japanese technique for repairing ceramics with gold leaf.If the copper foil is soldered, and a patina applied, the seams will blend in to be more like the frame.

Stage one - disassembly

Once the glass came out of the frame, it revealed a pretty paper lining. It's a fragment of a medieval oil painting showing a graceful young woman in a lovely dress. It's a shame that the maker cut off her head.

Stage two - glue

There was a splinter of mirror about the size of a 5p coin that could be fitted back in. On the first go, the glue hadn't quite set yet. It came loose when I tried to put the mirror back into the frame.

Stage three - repaired with copper foil

In the final piece (not shown), I applied a patina of copper sulphate to the foil to give it a more antiqued look. This removed the shine and made it a little bit of a closer match to the original metalwork.