a whole artifact of this nature is extraordinary . The dish is extremely fragile but the glasswork is intact and illuminates beautifully nearly two millennia after being crafted . '' The glass petals are blue with white borders and are each indented . They were originally embedded in opaque red glass , the museum said , and while the red coloring has diminished across most of the dish , it can still be seen around the edge . `` The complexity of its manufacture indicates that the dish was a highly-prized and valuable item , '' the museum said in a statement . Such beautifully crafted vessels were in vogue in the 1st and early 2nd centuries , the museum said . Dating is under way to determine the precise period of the find . The excavations that uncovered the dish are part of an ongoing dig at the extensive eastern cemetery of Roman London , which was then called Londinium . The site now lies in the neighborhood of Aldgate . The cemetery -- which , by law , lay outside the city walls -- spanned more than 400 years of Roman occupation from the late 1st to early
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Archaeologists excavating a site in East London have made an `` extremely rare and unprecedented '' find -- a delicately detailed dish made of hundreds of pieces of tiny glass petals , the Museum of London Docklands announced Wednesday . The dish unearthed after about 2,000 years . The `` millefiori '' dish -LRB- the name means `` thousand flowers '' -RRB- was found buried in the grave of a Roman Londoner , the museum said . Based on the other grave goods found at the site , archaeologists believe the person buried there was wealthy , the museum said . The dish was highly fragmented when archaeologists unearthed it , the museum said , but it had been held together over the centuries by the earth around it . A conservator at the museum reassembled the dish , which is now on display at the Museum of London Docklands . `` Piecing together and conserving such a complete artifact offered a rare and thrilling challenge , '' said conservator Liz Goodman , who did the work . `` We occasionally get tiny fragments of millefiori , but the opportunity to work on