Details for White metal

Use this term where the metal is grey or silvery in colour, but where you strongly suspect that the item is not silver. This term will be most often used for an additional material (a coating), or a nasty modern alloy.

For Britannia metal, use 'tin alloy'.

Silver alloyed with copper can look very like copper-alloy with a white-metal coating, so consider this possibility; an early Treasure Act item that appeared to be entirely copper-alloy with a greyish coating was analysed and found to be 70% silver.

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Linked data

British Museum URI: 11967

Latest examples recorded with images

We have recorded 2 examples.