Ingots of bismuth, tin, solder, pewter and cadmium enclosed in a roll of paper packaging. The packaging reads: 'Metals and alloys bismuth, cadmium and pewter solder'. Bismuth is a white metal with a pinky tinge. It is crystalline and brittle and is the worst conductor of heat and electricity of all the metals; Cadmium is a soft bluey white metal similar in many respects to zinc. It is highly toxic as are its compounds; Tin is a silvery white metal used in many alloys and compounds; Pewter is a metal alloy, made up mainly of tin (85-96%) mixed with copper and/ or lead. Modern pewter mixes tin and copper with antimony or bismuth instead of lead; Solder is any one of a number of alloys used to join metal to metal. Usually they are tin or lead alloys used.

These metals comes from a 15-drawer cabinet found in the Herschel family home in the 1950s. The contents of this and a similar cabinet seem to suggest that they were used by successive generations of the family to store specimens, material and apparatus for carrying out experiments.

These samples of metal were presumably used by John F.W. Herschel or his children as the raw materials for experiments. They may even date from a generation earlier and relate to William Herschel and his experiments to find the perfect recipe for the speculum metal he used for his telescope mirrors.